Editorial: the first-instance courts will succeed or fail on the court office, not the name

This is an editorial by the AGENTE LEX newsroom. It expresses the portal's opinion.

Organic Law 1/2025, on the efficiency of the Public Justice Service, changed more than procedures. It changed how courts are organised. According to the Ministry of Justice, the reform turns 3,900 single-judge courts into 431 Tribunales de Instancia (first-instance courts), organised by jurisdiction and specialised sections.

The rollout was done in three phases:

That was the planned timetable to complete the model. According to the Ministry, on 1 July 2025 4,818 Justice Offices in the Municipality also started up in the judicial districts of the first phase, designed for obtaining court documents, filing submissions, assisting victims or connecting by videoconference with the courts.

The change that matters is not visible on the facade

For the citizen, whether their case is handled by "First Instance Court number 3" or the "Civil Section of the Tribunal de Instancia" is a question of name. For the lawyer, a different plaque does not change much either. What does change is what is behind it.

The new model rests on a court office that centralises the common services. The idea is reasonable: stop repeating the same tasks in every court and distribute the load better between judges and staff. But a reorganisation of this size only improves the service if the office works. If the common tasks clog up, the jam no longer affects one court: it affects a whole section.

In June 2025 the Government approved Royal Decree 530/2025 with the organisational and staffing provisions to implement the model. And the CGPJ has had to adapt its own inspection function through Instruction 1/2026. These are signs that the reform requires adjusting almost every piece of the system.

What should be measured

A reform that promises efficiency must be able to prove it. We believe the Ministry, the autonomous communities and the CGPJ should publish regularly, and by section, at least these indicators:

1. Time to admission of claims and appeals.
2. Response time to procedural filings.
3. Hearings suspended and their cause.
4. Time to notification of decisions.

With that data, the legal profession, judges and citizens could know whether the reform is working and where to correct it. Without it, the debate will remain one of impressions.

A reform added to others

The Tribunales de Instancia do not arrive alone. The same law introduced the requirement to attempt ADR before suing in the civil courts, which we explain in our practical guide to ADR as a precondition for suing. The duty-solicitor scheme has just launched new duty-solicitor modules that begin to pay for that negotiation activity. And judges now work under rules on the use of artificial intelligence in justice.

Each of these pieces can be reasonable on its own. Together, they demand considerable adaptation effort from firms, above all small ones, which have no one dedicated to following every change.

The role of the legal profession

The legal profession is the most intensive user of the system and so the best placed to detect where it fails. We propose three things:

• Report incidents to the bar association, in a documented and concrete way, so they can be passed on with data.
• Separate the problem from the name. Useful criticism identifies a procedure, a deadline or a section, not one that rejects the model wholesale.
• Demand transparency in operating data, as we would for any public service.

Reform of the court map was needed years ago. Whether it works now depends on careful, measurable management. We will follow its progress in Industry news and in Opinion.