Court-appointed lawyers are receiving more attention, but precariousness means fewer and fewer professionals are willing to participate in this service. Across Catalonia, the exodus has been halved, coinciding with an agreement to improve remuneration, but the figures have not improved in the Barcelona demarcation, where the Bar Association of Barcelona (Icab) warns that the loss of professionals is 20% in the last decade. Xavier Batlle and Núria Astorgas are two of the professionals who have not wanted to abandon this task. Despite having the same job, they are court-appointed lawyers in two completely different specialities: minors, whose activity in Barcelona has increased by 10% in the last semester, and second chance, a mechanism that allows good-faith debtors to cancel their debts and which has grown by 23% in the last six months.

Changes are coming to the governing board of the Barcelona Bar Association (ICAB), one of the largest professional organizations, given that membership is mandatory for the thousands of lawyers practicing in the region. The first to announce her intention to succeed Jesús Sánchez as dean—who arrived in January 2022 after years of involvement with the bar's government and is not seeking a repeat term—has been civil lawyer Cristina Vallejo. A partner and director of the VPG firm, which has five lawyers in total, she served as a member of the bar's governing board (2017-2021) and as training coordinator (2021-2024).