The signing, on January 21, 2026, of the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of the Lawyer Profession, by minister Paulo Rangel, representing the Portuguese State, constitutes an unequivocal sign that the international legal community recognizes that there are times of exacerbation of the authority of States over citizens, with the Justice sector being no exception.
The forensic mandate in times like the one we are experiencing, of compression on citizens’ fundamental rights, becomes a vulnerable target and this vulnerability is a direct threat to the Rule of Law in that it constrains citizens’ right of access to law and justice. The Minister of Justice, Rita Alarcão Júdice, stated when signing the text that “the safety of lawyers is the safety of democracy”.
Portugal thus joined the founding group of signatories to this convention – the first of a binding nature exclusively dedicated to the protection of lawyers –, at a time when the next constitutional revision begins to be debated.
Until the opening of this convention for signature, in May 2025, the international protection of the legal profession was mainly based on instruments of soft law: recommendations, basic principles and resolutions without binding legal force. The convention CETS n.º 226 change this paradigm. By imposing concrete obligations on signatory States, notably the guarantee of independence of professional associations, protection against persecution, intimidation and harassment in the exercise of their mandate, the safeguarding of professional secrecy and the definition of objective and transparent criteria for access to the profession, the Council of Europe elevates the protection of lawyers to the level of internationally required guarantees. The planned monitoring mechanism, with the creation of GRAVO and a Committee of the Parties, ensures that these obligations will not remain in the dead letter of the treaty.
The Constitution of the Portuguese Republic guarantees, in its article 20, access to the law and the courts, and recognizes, in article 208, the role of the lawyer in the administration of Justice. But these provisions are clearly insufficient for the real realization of citizens’ fundamental right of access to law and justice. The immunity of the forensic mandate, notably the inviolability of communications between lawyer and client, protection against arbitrary arrests in the exercise of the profession and the independence of professional orders in the face of political power, is not constitutionally defined in the Fundamental Law.
The lawyer appears in the Fundamental Law as an assistant to Justice, but not expressly as what he is: guarantor of the defense of citizens’ fundamental rights.
The next constitutional review should, therefore, provide for: the express elevation of professional secrecy to the category of an autonomous constitutional guarantee, with reinforced protection against searches, seizures and interceptions of communications between the client and the lawyer; the consecration of the organic independence of forensic professional orders as a constitutional principle, removing them from temporary legislative instruments; and the provision of a specific regime to protect lawyers against acts of intimidation, coercion or persecution in the exercise of their mandate, in conjunction with the international monitoring mechanisms created in the meantime.
A judicial system in which lawyers can be intimidated, persecuted or instrumentalized – directly or through the weakening of their procedural guarantees – is a system in which the citizen is exposed to the aggressor power of the State, maximebefore the Public Ministry, the Federal Revenue Service and Social Security. The independence of the forensic mandate is not a corporate privilege: it is a condition for the functioning of the Rule of Law with all guarantees for the defense of citizens. Fifty years after the Constituent Assembly, it is time for the Fundamental Law to recognize that citizen defenders – lawyers – are an irreplaceable part of Brazilian democracy.
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