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The Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ) assumes that with the increase, which corresponds to the monetary development, the number of civil law proceedings to be heard in the first instance before the district courts will increase again. The decline in civil law proceedings in recent decades has worried the industry for years; between 2005 and 2019 alone, new cases in local courts fell by around 36% and in regional courts by around 21%. One also looked at these enormous numbers and their possible reasons Research report commissioned by the BMJ from 2023.
Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP) wants to counteract this trend, especially in the local courts. On Wednesday he posted one Draft bill which wants to increase the jurisdiction of the local courts to 8,000 euros. As an entry point, district courts contribute to the justice system being closer to the citizens. Their distribution across the area ensures local legal protection and easy access to justice, says Buschmann, a self-trained lawyer. If the number of cases continued to decline without the courts being able to reduce their staff, smaller district court locations would run the risk of having to close completely, explained the Minister of Justice.
Neighbors always go to the AG, procurement law always goes to the LG
According to the draft bill published by the BMJ on Wednesday, further responsibilities of the local and regional courts are to be created, regardless of the value in dispute. Civil law disputes are becoming increasingly complex in some legal areas; In other areas of law, proximity plays a special role, explains the BMJ. The goal: greater specialization of the judiciary and more efficient procedures.
Disputes in the area of neighboring law should therefore be referred to the local courts regardless of the value of the dispute. However, an allocation of all disputes relating to air passenger rights to the local courts, which was still being considered by the justice ministers of the federal states, did not make it into the draft. According to the BMJ’s plans, the regional courts should be responsible for disputes in the area of procurement matters, medical treatments and publication disputes, regardless of the value of the dispute.
The draft, which largely takes up proposals from the state justice departments, assumes that the number of cases received by local courts nationwide will increase by around 44,000 cases per year; regional courts would therefore receive around 38,000 fewer cases per year and the higher regional courts would receive around 10,000 fewer cases. According to the rather vague forecast, the need for personnel will change – it is not yet possible to say exactly how much. The commission of the state judicial administrations for personnel requirement calculations is now to determine whether and how the average processing effort for case processing in the local, regional and higher regional courts will change. According to the draft, the actual personnel requirements are to be determined and concrete measures proposed in order to take the effects of the changed legal situation into account as precisely as possible.
Around 11 million euros less legal fees?
Prof. Dr. Matthias Kilian provided context for the plans on With 715,000 new additions to the district courts, this leads to an estimated increase of 8%. The owner of the Hans Soldan Endowed Professorship for Legal Law and Lawyer-Oriented Legal Training at the University of Cologne, who has been collecting and evaluating facts and figures about the legal industry for many years, draws a sobering conclusion: “Since from 2019 to 2022 alone the number of AG- If the procedure decreases by 20%, it will quickly be used up.”
The draft does not intend to change the ZPO regulations on the requirement to have a lawyer. The fact remains that the need for a lawyer depends on the court with jurisdiction and citizens according to § 78 ZPO at the district court does not necessarily require legal assistance. In the future, you should be able to represent yourself in proceedings with amounts in dispute of up to 8,000 euros.
Based on a number of assumptions, the draft assumes that the shift in responsibility could lead to a possible loss of legal representation in around 5,000 cases. With an average compensation volume of around 2,200 euros, the justification states that the economy and citizens would be relieved of a total of around 11 million euros.
Editorial team beck-aktuell, Pia Lorenz, March 6, 2024.