Jura de cuentas: how a Spanish lawyer collects fees the client won't pay

Every firm has a client who stopped answering the day the judgment was served. Win or lose, the fee note has been sitting in their inbox for weeks and the money on account does not cover half of it. The temptation is to let it go, because chasing it looks more expensive than the amount. For fees earned in court proceedings it is not: the jura de cuentas under article 35 of the Spanish Civil Procedure Act (LEC) is a fast procedure, with no lawyer or procurador required, before the same court that heard the case.

Fast, with one condition. If the client challenges the fees as excessive, what decides whether the process takes a few weeks or turns into a long side-proceeding is a document signed at the start of the engagement: the prior fee estimate. That is the core point of this article.

Who can use it, and for what

Article 35.1 LEC allows lawyers to claim from the party they defend the fees “earned in the matter”, by filing a detailed fee note and formally stating that the fees are owed and unpaid. Their heirs have the same right. Neither a lawyer nor a procurador is required.

Article 34 provides the equivalent for the procurador (court representative) against the client, for fees and outlays advanced for the matter.

The jura de cuentas presupposes earlier proceedings and is handled by the court that heard them. Hence its main limit: it does not work for out-of-court work. Advice on a property purchase, drafting a contract or a negotiation that never reached court must be claimed another way, covered below.

The procedure, step by step

1. Filing. A detailed fee note, item by item, with the formal statement that it is owed and unpaid. Attaching the engagement letter is advisable even when not required. In one case it is required.

2. Where the client is an individual, an unfair-terms check. Since 20 March 2024, following Real Decreto-ley 6/2023, article 35.4 requires the contract with the client to be filed with the claim. Before the payment demand, the court clerk (letrado de la Administración de Justicia) refers the file to the judge, who examines of their own motion whether any clause underpinning the claim or setting the amount may be unfair. If so, the parties are heard for five days and the judge rules by order within the following five. The order is appealable in all cases and, once final, is res judicata. An engagement letter with clear fee terms passes this filter without trouble; a vague fee clause can sink the whole claim.

3. Payment demand. The clerk requires the debtor to pay or challenge the account within ten days, failing which enforcement follows.

4. If the client neither pays nor challenges, enforcement issues for the amount of the fee note (article 35.3).

5. If the client challenges, there are two tracks depending on the ground.

Challenges: undue or excessive

Undue. The client argues the items are not owed: work not done, not instructed, or already paid. Article 35.2 refers to the procurador’s regime in article 34.2: the lawyer is given three days to respond, the clerk examines the account, the case record and the documents, and issues a decree within ten days fixing the amount, with enforcement if it is not paid within five days of service.

Excessive. The client accepts the fees are owed, just not that much. The lawyer is given five days to respond. If the lawyer does not accept the reduction, the clerk assesses the fees under articles 241 et seq., the costs-assessment regime. Under that regime, article 246.1 provides for the relevant part of the record to be sent to the Bar Association for a report, and the decree is issued “in view of the proceedings and the opinions issued”. Bar Associations may publish guideline criteria for exactly this purpose: the fourth additional provision of Ley 2/1974 on Professional Associations allows them only for costs assessment and jura de cuentas.

That whole intermediate stage is skipped in one situation: where the lawyer proves a prior fee estimate accepted in writing by the party challenging it. Then there is no assessment and no Bar report, and the clerk goes straight to the decree fixing the amount due.

What the Constitutional Court changed

For years article 35 said the clerk’s decree was “not subject to appeal”. Constitutional Court judgment 34/2019 of 14 March struck down that exclusion as unconstitutional, in both article 34 and article 35. Real Decreto-ley 6/2023 then rewrote the provision, with effect from 20 March 2024: the decree resolving a challenge for excessive fees is open to a direct review appeal (recurso de revisión), and neither the decree nor the order resolving the review prejudges, even in part, the judgment that may follow in later declaratory proceedings.

In practice: the jura de cuentas gives you an enforceable title quickly, but it does not close the underlying dispute. A client who loses can sue afterwards. So can a lawyer who loses.

One calendar note for anyone reading this on 31 August: the ten-day period is procedural and counted in working days (articles 130 and 133 LEC). A demand served in late July has not run during August, which is non-working under article 183 of the Judiciary Act (LOPJ), and resumes in September. The August court recess article covers this in detail.

A worked example

A Madrid lawyer represents an individual in ordinary proceedings over a building contract. The engagement letter, signed by the client, sets an estimate of €6,500 plus VAT for the first instance. At the outset she takes €2,000 plus VAT on account.

• Final fee note: €6,500 + €1,365 VAT = €7,865
• Paid on account: €2,000 + €420 VAT = €2,420
• Outstanding: €5,445

After judgment the client goes silent. On Tuesday 2 June 2026 she files the jura de cuentas with the detailed fee note and, since the client is an individual, the engagement letter. The judge finds no unfair terms.

The payment demand is served on Monday 15 June. The ten working days start on Tuesday 16 and end on Monday 29 June, with the grace day under article 135 LEC running until 3 p.m. on Tuesday 30.

On Friday 26 the client challenges the fees as excessive: the case, he says, was straightforward and €6,500 is too much. The lawyer is given five days; she rejects the reduction and produces the signed estimate. Because there is a prior estimate accepted in writing by the challenger, there is no assessment and no Bar report: the decree fixes €5,445, with enforcement if unpaid within five days of service. The client can seek review and, later, bring ordinary proceedings. But the lawyer already holds a title.

Without that engagement letter, the same matter would have gone through assessment under articles 241 et seq., the record sent to the Bar Association and the wait for its report. That is why the engagement letter with an estimate is not paperwork: it is half of the jura de cuentas.

When it does not apply: out-of-court work

For fees for advice, or for work not done within proceedings, the options are the order-for-payment procedure (monitorio) and the ordinary claim appropriate to the amount. The monitorio under article 812 LEC covers money debts of any amount that are liquidated, determined, due and payable, evidenced by documents signed by the debtor or by invoices and similar documents that customarily record the relationship. A signed engagement letter and issued invoices are exactly that.

There is a prior step to plan for. Since 3 April 2025, article 5.2 of Ley Orgánica 1/2025 makes prior negotiation a precondition for admissibility in the declaratory proceedings of Book II and the special proceedings of Book IV of the LEC, where the monitorio sits. The jura de cuentas, by contrast, is regulated in Book I.

Three years from when the service ended

Whichever route you take, the clock is running. Article 1967 of the Civil Code sets a three-year limitation period for actions to pay lawyers their fees and the expenses and outlays incurred, counted from when the services ceased. Article 1973 allows it to be interrupted by, among other things, an out-of-court claim by the creditor or any acknowledgement of the debt by the debtor.

A formal demand sent in time is worth more than a fee note re-sent every quarter by ordinary email.

How this fits in Mandato

The jura de cuentas needs two things a firm should have without hunting for them: the detailed, itemised fee note, and the signed engagement letter with the estimate. In Mandato, billing is tied to the matter alongside its documents, so the fee notes issued and the engagement letter for each matter are in the same place when you need them. How to organise that billing and collection flow is covered in the article on automating billing. Whether to claim, and by which route, remains the lawyer’s call.