The president of the Portuguese Bar Association (OA) today called the open letter from 40 lawyers calling for an urgent revision of the Bar Association’s Statute a nonsense, as “this process is already underway”.
“This is nothing,” Fernanda de Almeida Pinheiro told Lusa, referring to the open letter signed by dozens of lawyers requesting an extraordinary General Assembly of the OA to discuss the “urgent need” to review the statute of the class and the future of the profession.
ccording to the president, the OA’s Lisbon Regional Council (CRL) and its president João Massano, the driving force behind the open letter, “know very well” that, as soon as the Lawyers’ Statute was approved at the end of 2023 and promulgated last January, the OA’s General Council “immediately said” that it was necessary to “review this Statute”.
Fernando de Almeida Pinheiro recalled that all the Regional Councils and all the Deontological Councils of the OA were invited by the General Council to present suggestions and proposals for changes to the Statute”.
According to Pinheiro, the president of the CRL didn’t respond to the appeal and chose to sign an open letter asking for what the OA’s General Council and “all lawyers” have been demanding for months.
For her, “it’s clear” that all this “has to do with the next elections” at the OA in 2025.
Fernanda de Almeida Pinheiro said it was “a pity that many of the people (lawyers) who signed the open letter have not, during this year, supported the OA in its fight to change the Statute”, nor have they contributed to this legislative change, and now they are signing a letter asking for precisely what the OA and its General Council are preparing and which involves holding a General Assembly of the class.
The signatories of the open letter are calling for an extraordinary general assembly to be held as a matter of urgency, with the aim of discussing and approving a draft amendment to the statute that “truly represents the values and needs” of these professionals
“Your voice and experience are fundamental so that we can build a document together that is more than a set of rules, but a manifesto of our professional identity and commitment to justice,” says the open letter, which includes André Matias de Almeida, Artur Marques, Francisco and Eduarda Proença de Carvalho, João Massano, João Vieira de Almeida, José António Barreiros, José Gaspar Schwalbach, Manuel Magalhães e Silva and Tiago Rodrigues Bastos.
