This “personal” choice met with a broad echo in an institution in crisis, which organized a new day of action on Tuesday against “bareback justice”.
“The deterioration of working conditions, relations with magistrates and colleagues … I think he was fed up”, summarizes Morgane Boucher, colleague and friend, who also left the dress in July.
“We all recognized ourselves in the way he passionately loved this job, but also the disillusions, the cracking system …”, lists lawyer Marie-Anne Soubré, columnist on RMC.
Published at the end of August on Twitter, Me Morain’s long text explaining his decision to “bifurcate (r)”, aroused many reactions from colleagues, magistrates, police officers or gendarmes. “I was overwhelmed by the echo it had. Obviously that means something,” observes the lawyer.
According to the National Bar Council, 2.2% of lawyers left the profession prematurely in 2020, compared to 1.4% in 2010.
Since then, confinement has gone through this and above all the unprecedented mobilization of the world of justice in the fall of 2021, after the platform of 3,000 magistrates alerting to their working conditions.
“Justice has not been a political priority for ten years, and that will not change in the next five years. I do not want to exhaust myself (…) repairing the boat”, concludes Eric Morain.
– From business to wine –
In his office at the Carbonnier Lemaze Rasle business firm, in the beautiful districts of Paris, his boxes are ready, alongside boxes of wine, piles of books and a Rubik’s cube pouf.
In a blue polo shirt, small glasses on a round face, this father of three children also points to the wall of courtroom sketches by the great criminal lawyer Jean-Marc Varaut, with whom he cut his teeth in the late 1990s.
Accustomed to press law, renowned specialist in business criminal law, Eric Morain “saw the first white-collar cases arrive, politicians caught up in criminal justice”.
Meeting a winegrower introduced him to the world of “natural” wines. He campaigns for the labeling of wine ingredients and publishes a “Plea for natural wine”.
The defense of Nadia Daam, a journalist threatened with death on an internet forum in 2017, then led her to develop expertise in online harassment.
For his penultimate plea, Thursday in Paris, in the form of a summary, he defended the Belgian wine merchant Sandrine Goeyvaerts, victim of cyberbullying after denouncing a sexist caricature.
He is a “hyper accessible lawyer, not at all in show defense”, describes a client, Aurélia Gilbert, survivor of the November 13 attacks who filed a complaint against Twitter for her inaction after a wave of harassment.
As a lawyer for the National Federation of Victims of Attacks, he has participated in major terrorist trials in recent years. On Wednesday, he opened the speaking tour of the lawyers for the civil parties to the trial of the Nice attack.
– “Twitter Bar” –
He explains that he decided to leave the bar after the trial of the attack in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, last March, marked by the words of forgiveness from certain victims. “The lawyer that I am was upset by it and the Christian that I am was particularly marked by it. After that, we say to ourselves, what more can I live for?”
Among other satisfactions, he cites the defense of General Philippe Rondot in the Clearstream affair, the release in 2018 of Michel Cardon, then the oldest detainee in France, or the conviction for rape of minors of the founder of the School by boat in 2013 .
With a hint of regret, he will move away from the “Twitter bar”, which brings together black dresses active on this social network where he has 41,500 subscribers.
The friendships born of these “unforgettable encounters” describe him as “generous”, “unifying”, loving people to discover his favorite bistros or cuvées.
Very marked by the premature death at the beginning of 2021 of the Lille lawyer Jean-Yves Moyart (Master Mô on Twitter), whom he cites in the reasons for his departure, Eric Morain has worked for the reissue of his book of legal chronicles.
He wants to remain discreet about his next life. “I will work with someone I admire. I will not make wine, but I will be in a very beautiful wine region, on the banks of the Loire”, he distills.
He should also resume his “chronicle of the gourmet avocado” in the France Inter program “We will taste”. “I’m not disappearing, and neither is my appetite.”
