The legal aid regime continues to fuel debate (see, not., our article, An overhaul under budgetary constraints of the degression of lawyers’ remuneration for legal aid, JCP 2025. 673; S. Grayot-Dirx, Pleading lawyer and applying lawyer: a single legal aid for all?, JCP 2024. 1324), as it requires the search for a subtle balance between the guarantee of effective defense for indigent litigants and respect for the functioning of the legal profession. For the record, a first judgment rendered recently by the second civil chamber illustrated this tension, forcefully recalling that the president of the bar remains required to appoint a new lawyer without delay, even after the successive exhaustion of several counsels, since the assistance is obligatory and the beneficiary retains the freedom to dismiss his defender (Civ. 2eNov. 20, 2025, n° 22-17.442 FR-PB, Dalloz news, 1is dec. 2025, obs. C. Caseau-Roche). The second judgment in principle, the subject of this commentary – delivered on the same day – is in the same vein but from a different angle: this time it is a question of specifying the distribution of powers between the legal aid office (BAJ) and the president of the bar when a dispute opposes a litigant to the designated lawyer.
In this case, a litigant had benefited from legal aid in two proceedings and had been assigned the same lawyer. Believing that he refused to act against his former employer’s lawyer, he asked the BAJ to assess the legitimacy of the excuse…
