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On 22 July 2026 the Senate gave its final approval to the reform of the legal profession, which became law on 28 July (Law No. 137/2026, published in the Official Gazette on 1 August). A process that began amid clashes and stalemates - 177 votes in favour in the Chamber of Deputies in May, over 150 amendments blocked in committee between January and February, cross-pressure between the Bar and other professional bodies - but which does not close the matter: this is an enabling (framework) law, not the finished reform. The Government now has six months to issue the implementing decrees (after consulting the National Bar Council, the CNF, with possible corrective decrees within the following twelve months). Many of the principles in the text - professional secrecy, the code of ethics, mandatory professional indemnity insurance, registration with the lawyers' pension fund (Cassa Forense) - are nothing new: they were already in the 2012 reform of the legal profession (Law 247/2012), and the enabling law merely confirms or tightens them. The real interest lies elsewhere: in a limited number of points that mark a genuine break with the past, and in one issue - legal advice reserved to lawyers - that has ignited conflict with other professions. The real changes.Once the background noise is stripped away, the substantive changes concentrate on four fronts. The lawyer's oath returns, after the 2012 law had replaced it with a more sober solemn undertaking. A change that is mostly symbolic, but not irrelevant in terms of professional identity. Collective and corporate forms of practice are redesigned in depth: law firms structured as companies (società tra avvocati) have existed since 2012, but the enabling law restricts the entry of non-professional partners (admitted only for technical services or as investors, with a cap on distributable profits), opens the door to multidisciplinary networks with their own legal personality, and for the first time introduces rules for lawyers working exclusively for, or in ongoing collaboration with, another lawyer or firm. Governance changes shape: the CNF's term moves from four to three years, with a new composition and weighted voting; local bar councils see their electoral rules rewritten (gender balance, term limits, electronic voting), and a single digital register of lawyers is created. Training, pupillage and the bar examination change in concrete ways: an annual training obligation with suspension from the register for those who fail to earn the required credits, an 18-month pupillage (12 of which consist of mandatory courses), and a streamlined bar exam reduced to one written and one oral test, replacing the three written papers formally required since 2012 but always postponed under transitional rules. The real sticking point: reserved legal advice.This is the point that has generated the most controversy outside the Bar, but it needs to be read carefully, because the text is less revolutionary than it is often portrayed. What does not change. The enabling law provides that out-of-court legal advice, when connected to judicial activity and provided on a continuous, systematic and organised basis, remains reserved to lawyers - except where other regulated professions have specific competences provided for by law. This is, almost word for word, the current Article 2(6) of Law 247/2012, already applied by the Supreme Court (Corte di Cassazione) to punish the unauthorised practice of law. The link with ADR tools (assisted negotiation, mandatory mediation) is likewise not new: AIGA (the young lawyers' association) had already argued for it in 2022. The substantive scope of the reservation, in other words, is not being created today but dates back at least thirteen years. What genuinely changes - and what has angered other professions. Three technical innovations, but with heavy practical effects:
It is above all the automatic penalty - not the existence of the reservation itself - that is fuelling tension: for a non-lawyer professional, even a small step into the "judicial" perimeter becomes a direct financial risk, since the fee charged could simply be void by operation of law. The Services Directive: the reservation holds, but not everything does.The debate has floated the idea that the reservation on legal advice is a derogation to be justified case by case under EU law. This is an imprecise reading. Legal advice falls within the scope of Services Directive 2006/123/EC, but Recital 88 of that very directive expressly cites, as a typical example of a legitimately reserved activity, precisely "the exclusive right of lawyers to give legal advice". The reservation for lawyers is not, in other words, an exception to be won: it is the scenario the directive itself contemplates - as noted in the Government's own technical-regulatory analysis accompanying the bill, and not - curiously - by the CNF in its public statements, which preferred to stress governance and professional secrecy instead. The truly slippery ground lies elsewhere: Article 25 of the directive, on multidisciplinary activities, forbids Member States from imposing an exclusive-activity requirement, except for regulated professions and to the extent justified by requirements of independence and impartiality. The Court of Justice applies a strict proportionality test to such restrictions: in a judgment of October 2024, it struck down a blanket national ban on the coexistence of two professional activities, finding it disproportionate. This is a precedent worth heeding: if the implementing decrees translate into an absolute ban on multidisciplinary collaboration, rather than a proportionate system of safeguards, the risk of a European challenge would not be merely theoretical. Enthusiastic leadership, worried rank and file.Reactions tell two different stories depending on who is speaking. At the institutional top, the tone is celebratory: CNF president Francesco Greco spoke of a "historic moment", in the year of the Council's centenary. The Organismo Congressuale Forense struck a similar note, welcoming the opening of "a new season for the legal profession". Outside the Bar, the mood is the opposite. ProfessionItaliane (23 professional bodies other than the Bar) spoke of "deep regret and bitter disappointment", warning of "distortive effects on the market". ANC (the accountants' association) called the CNF's assurances on the safeguard clause for other professions "unconvincing", arguing that advisory work "will become exclusively reserved to lawyers". A cross-party group of professional bodies wrote to parliamentary rapporteurs seeking clarification on the boundaries of the reservation. Even within the legal profession, positions are not unanimous. The CGIL trade union, together with APIQA, NIdiL and Filcams, takes a broadly positive view of the framework but calls for stronger protections for lawyers working exclusively for, or in continuous collaboration with, another firm - a category it describes as "often lacking adequate protection". And some grassroots voices have dismissed the reform as born "behind closed doors at the top" and mainly useful to the minority of lawyers with the highest incomes. What to watch from here on.The law sets the framework, but the truly decisive points - where the line of the reservation will fall, how the fee nullity rules will work in practice, which acts will require a lawyer's assistance on pain of invalidity, what protections will apply to lawyers in exclusive or continuous collaboration - will be settled in the implementing legislative decrees, expected within six months. That will be the arena in which it becomes clear whether the reform is perceived as a shared evolution or as a compromise imposed from above. The reactions of these weeks suggest that the battle for consensus is far from over. Main source: Law No. 137 of 28 July 2026 (Official Gazette, General Series No. 177 of 1 August 2026); Senate briefing dossier on the reform of the legal profession (A.C. 2629-A). Copyright Leexè 2026 | riproduzione riservata |
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