Several MPs on Italy's justice and economic affairs committees have backed protests about the government's proposed scrapping of mandatory fixed or minimum tariffs for legal work (see (2006) Gazette, 13 July, 6), the country's national bar council - the Consiglio Nazionale Forense - has claimed. A ten-day strike last month culminated in thousands of lawyers marching through the capital, Rome, in black court robes. Federico Sutti, a partner at DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary in Italy, said: 'The Minister of Justice has promised to give serious consideration to the protesters' demands.'


Jonathan Rayner