Os jovens operários da advocacia: um estudo sobre a precarização do trabalho nos escritórios de contencioso de massa

Abstract

The modifications in the social, political, legal and above all economic structures in the context of flexible accumulation resulted in significant changes in the lawyers’ work. The expansion of standardized mass consumption, the privatization of essential services, as well as the boom of Law Schools in Brazil, mainly in the 1990’s, marked by the advance of the neoliberal agenda, made arise a new kind of lawyering organization called mass litigation. The offices of this sector of juridical services take on a large number of lawsuits. As a rule, they are simple, of a repetitive nature, with low values and relatively modest fees, mainly because they run in the Special Courts of Consumers’ Protection. The goal of this study was to evidence the new morphology that rocked the pillars of the juridical profession in the mass litigation offices, its causes and consequences. It especially shows the indelible correlation between these kinds of organization and the precariousness of the work, that strikes mainly the young. The study takes into consideration the lawyer who is from 20 to 30 years old and who has had a license to practice law for at most 5 years. The temporal mark was from 2009 to 2014. Furthermore, it was restricted to the ones who work for offices that represent companies in the Special Courts of Consumers’ Protection of Salvador, Bahia. To acknowledge the object, the research used literature review, document analysis and semi-structured interviews of the lawyers who fit the profile. The data identified that the operational feasibility of the mass litigation depends on the automation of the productive process. It also depends on the simple and repetitive work that is ill-paid and has exhaustive work hours. This kind of bond is flexible, uncertain and outsourced. All of those are aggravated by the saturation of professionals in the job market. These phenomena lead to various dimensions of precarious labor. The adverse overview strikes mainly the young, who find in the mass litigation one of the few ways to access the job market. Thus, facing this theme was essential to surpass the smoke curtain that sees the lawyer as a liberal professional who is immune to the precariousness process. It revealed the inhospitable productive scenery of the offices of mass litigation and the intimate relation with the labor hostility that subjugates the young lawyer.