Social law lawyer

Social law covers all the legal rules, administrative practices and court decisions specific to social security matters.

Whether from the point of view of an employer, an employee or a self-employed person, this subject therefore includes all the legal aspects relating to the activities covered by social legislation.

WHAT ARE THE SPECIAL SKILLS OF A LAWYER PRACTICING SOCIAL LAW?

A lawyer whose practice is dedicated to social law will first be familiar with the legal rules applicable to this matter (laws, royal decrees, etc.). He will be able to advise his clients on the way in which social legislation addresses certain complex situations (work in different territories, etc.), analyze the possibilities of optimization or even take care of the procedures applicable in special circumstances (NSSO audit, CCT 42bis, etc.).

He will also have knowledge of the administrative rules and practices specific to this matter, given the existence of different players in the sector (NSSO, Inasti, etc.).

Finally, a lawyer practicing social law will also have experience of courts and tribunals, which can be decisive in the event of a dispute because theory is one thing, but the practice of law before the courts requires knowledge of legal procedures, jurisprudential inclinations and many other aspects which can only be learned by practicing a subject for a prolonged period of time.

HOW TO VERIFY THE COMPETENCE OF A LAWYER IN SOCIAL LAW?

The official title of “specialist” granted by the Bar Association may be a relevant criterion to help with your research. However, many lawyers do not complete the formalities required to obtain this title, so this criterion alone will not suffice. This is the reason why there is much more reference to a preferred area of expertise in practice than to a specialization. Almost all lawyers practice a preferential area while far fewer are those who have satisfied the formalities to be able to avail themselves of the official title of specialist.

Therefore, determining whether a lawyer is specialized or rather expert in his area requires being able to decipher the codes of the industry. As often when there is no real organized and generalized standard, it will be necessary to proceed by bundle of clues as far as the information is accessible, which in practice is often problematic.

Indeed, an expert will be recognizable by a university specialization, by his scientific activities, by his participation in working committees, by university mandates, by his years of practice, by the opinion of his clients, etc. It will be the addition of these different criteria that can adequately inform the client.

However, some of this information is confidential, some unavailable or scattered and this makes the task difficult.

THE SOLUTION? AN OBJECTIVE AND RELIABLE RATING OF LAWYERS AND THE SHARING OF CLIENTS’ EXPERIENCES

This opacity, whether voluntary or not, creates a real problem of access to lawyers and contributes to the idea that this lack of transparency is “organized” by the profession. This would be going too fast because the lawyer is bound by deontological rules which oblige lawyers to keep their information confidential, not to reveal the name of their client, etc.

This is the reason why an innovative solution was needed. uLaw has therefore developed a unique algorithm that provides reliable scoring of legal profiles. uLaw gathers the various objective and confidential information specific to the lawyer to derive a score, supplemented by the opinions of client users of the platform. This “composite” rating not only ensures visibility of the lawyer’s technical skills, evaluated by uLaw, but also of his human and commercial competence, which is assessed by his former clients.