The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has found in a judgment of May 2020 that the right of a legal assistance insured person to freely choose his or her lawyer applies not only to proceedings before a court or an administrative body, but also to stages in a dispute that may lead to such proceedings before a court. In this specific case, the ECJ ruled that this right applies to Belgian forms of mediation. With this ruling, the ECJ continues the trend in which it expands the limits of the right to free choice of one’s lawyer. I also discuss this judgment in my recent publication in the Dutch legal journal Jurisprudentie Burgerlijk Procesrecht (JBPr 2020/73).