President wants digital platform with AIMA

The new president of the Bar Association wants to create, with the migration agency, “a digital platform for managing the workflow with lawyers” in regularization processes and will request an audit of the Order’s accounts.

João Massano, who took office as the new president of the Portuguese Bar Association (OA) this Thursday, in a ceremony in the Salão Nobre of the Order's headquarters, in Lisbon, said in his inaugural speech that he wanted to “improve the relationship with the public services that lawyers have access to”.

In the case of the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA), where thousands of migrant regularization processes are pending and with which the OA, during the mandate of the outgoing president, established a cooperation protocol to streamline these processes, João Massano said he wanted to revive an idea that, as president of the OA's Lisbon Regional Council, he presented to the organization's previous management.

The idea involves creating “a digital platform for managing the workflow with lawyers, dignifying both their work and the migrants they serve,” he said.

Showing himself skeptical of the idea of ​​“a major reform of the Justice system”, which he said “has resulted in no reform”, he stated that “perhaps the secret is to initiate sectoral reforms”, proposing to start with the area of ​​family and children, “treated as a second-class right”, despite the impact on people’s lives.

“An impact that in no way compares to that of mega-media lawsuits, but which unfortunately has no visibility except when statistics and serious cases are involved, as is the case, all too often, with cases of domestic violence,” he said.

João Massano, who has been critical of the OA's financial management by the previous president on several occasions, particularly with regard to the purchase of a new headquarters building, said he wants “correct accounting management”, and will therefore request an audit of the OA's accounts.

He also reaffirmed that he will perform the role on a non-exclusive and unpaid basis, using “only the essential benefits to carry it out”.

In a speech in which he revisited several objectives set out in his candidacy, including improving working conditions and payment for lawyers in the system for access to law and courts (SADT), he also placed emphasis on improving citizens' access to legal aid, “not limiting it to those who are almost indigent”.

João Massano also wants to “implement a prior consultation network available to citizens to assess the viability of cases ” and “simplify procedures for requesting legal aid”, establishing “service and information points in areas of greater social vulnerability”.

Ensuring a periodic review of the recently revised fee schedule is also a priority.

Insisting on the idea of ​​the need to unite the class, which also marked his campaign, João Massano, and speaking “inwardly”, said that it is not a question of “unanimity”, but “of cooperation”, appealing to lawyers to find “a common basis for working on the main challenges” so that they pull “everyone to the same side”.