Adjudicating on the remuneration of a court-appointed attorney in civil proceedings – comments de lege ferenda

Piotr Rylski

Adjudicating on the remuneration of a court-appointed attorney in civil proceedings – comments de lege ferenda

Publication date: 31.10.2022

Attorney-at-Law, 2022, 2 (31), pp. 373 - 393

https://doi.org/10.4467/23921943RP.22.041.16904

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Adjudicating on the remuneration of a court-appointed attorney in civil proceedings – comments de lege ferenda

Abstract

The right to participate in court proceedings of a court-appointed attorney is an essential guarantee of ensuring the right to a fair trial for the less well-off. A vital element of the institution of ex officio representation is the issue of financing this part of the activity conducted by advocates and attorneys-at-law. From the procedural perspective, this issue primarily relates to the method of adjudicating on the remuneration and costs of a court-assigned attorney. In this area – despite slow changes consisting in abandoning the completely free-of-charge activities of the attorney performed as part of legal aid – there is still no consistent and comprehensive regulation. As has been described in this article, there are still situations where an attorney providing legal aid in civil proceedings may not receive any remuneration because the State Treasury is only subsidiarily liable for these costs. In addition, it takes years to obtain reimbursement of legal representation costs for unpaid legal aid. In this article, one of the issues related to legal representation in civil cases has been addressed; namely, the issue of adjudication by the court on this remuneration. The stimulus to take up this topic has been provided, inter alia, by a number of postulates for changes in this field. Recently, there have also been specific proposals put forward for changes in the legislative. Therefore, the subject of this paper is not only to diagnose the current state of law and jurisprudence with regard to adjudicating on the remuneration of an attorney assigned by the court but, above all, to refer to the proposed proposals and to put forward specific postulates for the future.

Keywords

civil proceedings, court-appointed attorney, remuneration of a court-appointed attorney, unpaid legal aid

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Information

Information: Attorney-at-Law, 2022, 2 (31), pp. 373 - 393

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4467/23921943RP.22.041.16904

Article type: Original article

Titles:

Polish:

Adjudicating on the remuneration of a court-appointed attorney in civil proceedings – comments de lege ferenda

English:

Adjudicating on the remuneration of a court-appointed attorney in civil proceedings – comments de lege ferenda

Authors

Piotr Rylski

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5399-1624

University of Warsaw, Krakowskie Przedmieście 30, 00-927 Warszawa, Poland

Published at: 31.10.2022

Article status: Open

Licence: None

Percentage share of authors:

Piotr Rylski (Author) - 100%

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