ICAM’s Study Center reaches a record number of students
The Centro de Estudios del Colegio de la Abogacía de Madrid has closed the year 2024 with the best results in its history, setting an absolute record both in the number of students enrolled and in revenue generated. A balance that reinforces its position as a benchmark in specialized legal training and promotes its future conversion into a university center.
Image: Juan Manuel Mayllo, Deputy responsible for the Public Defender’s Office and Ester Mocholí, Deputy of the Board of Governors responsible for Training.
A course with more than 33,300 students
Throughout the academic year, 33,339 students have passed through ICAM’s classrooms, an increase of 49% compared to the 22,310 who attended in 2023. This growth has been driven mainly by the increase in the number of students who have accessed the training programs free of charge, which have gone from 16,780 in 2023 to 27,333 in 2024, reaching a representative 82% of the total number of enrolled students. Most of these free courses are specifically aimed at public defense lawyers, in line with ICAM’s commitment to strengthen and support this essential work to ensure access to justice.
The Deputy responsible for the Public Defender’s Office, Juan Manuel Mayllo, stressed: “ICAM remains firm in its commitment to strengthen the free training offer for Public Defender’s Office professionals, ensuring that these lawyers, a key element in the defense of the right to effective judicial protection, can access quality continuing education that allows them to meet the challenges of professional practice with solvency”.
Fee-paying students
The number of paying students has also experienced a slight increase, exceeding 6,000 enrollments, compared to 5,530 registered the previous year.
In economic terms, the Study Center has exceeded all forecasts, closing the year with 1,600,000 euros in income, 31% more than the 1,220,241 euros recorded in 2023, and notably above the 1,368,000 forecast in the corporation’s annual budget.
For Ester Mocholí, Deputy of the Board of Governors responsible for Training, “in addition to ICAM’s commitment to the continuous training of legal professionals, these figures endorse the efforts of the Study Center to adapt to the demands of a constantly evolving legal sector, laying the foundations for a new training model”.
For his part, the Dean of ICAM, Eugenio Ribón, emphasized: “The fulfillment of our government program is reflected in these historic results. Specialized legal training is not only a strategic axis for the advancement of Madrid’s legal profession, but also a key tool to strengthen the professional practice and guarantee a better prepared legal profession at the service of society”.
Results that consolidate an academic approach
In this sense, programs such as the course on access to the legal profession, which has reached its third edition, or the implementation of innovative initiatives such as the course on judicial facilitator, pioneer in its field, or the Master in Labor Law, adapted to the most pressing needs of the sector, have contributed, as explained from ICAM, to achieve results that consolidate an academic approach that combines a deep knowledge of the legal sector with a direct and constant connection with the realities and challenges of the professional practice.
All this within the framework of a transformation process that will give rise to ICAM’s future university center, and which in December took a giant step forward after the inclusion of university teaching among the essential purposes of the institution as part of an ambitious statutory reform endorsed by a broad majority at the General Meeting of the corporation.
