Mandate (law)
A mandate (from the Latin mandare , 'to entrust' , ' to commission') is understood in the legal system to mean the representation mandate that a client gives his lawyer , tax advisor or auditor . Mandates are "imperative": the lawyer is obliged to represent the interests of his client only and can be held accountable in the event of a violation .
The mandate is an assignment for so-called “services of a higher kind”, ie for a complex of services that must be planned and weighed up by the lawyer independently and whose meaningfulness or wealth of prospects the client generally cannot assess; the lawyer is therefore largely free in the concrete execution of his mandate.
However, it is an organ of the administration of justice (cf. for example § 1 BRAO ) and is therefore subject to special constitutional obligations, such as an independent professional code or special criminal law prohibitions.
The client is referred to as the client, the contractor (but rarely in actual parlance) as the mandate . In principle, the activity in Germany is paid in accordance with the Lawyers' Remuneration Act and only in exceptional cases pro bono .
