The Eighth Senate had to decide on an employee’s claim for damages against the lawyer for the works council of his former employer. The employee was largely no longer able to realize severance payment claims from a social plan after the employer’s subsequent insolvency and contacted the lawyer on the grounds that he had breached his obligations under the legal contract concluded with the works council. In its judgment of August 24, 2006 ( 8 AZR 414/05 ), the Eighth Senate decided that a works council lawyer is not liable to employees for any poor performance of the lawyer’s contract. If a lawyer is commissioned by the works council to negotiate a reconciliation of interests and a social plan, he or she must advise and represent the works council in its collective law tasks in accordance with Sections 111 et seq. BetrVG. This does not result in a mandate to represent the individual interests of employees. For these reasons, the legal contract concluded by the works council is usually not a contract with a protective effect in favor of the employees.