Legal Village

A whole world of opportunity

Posted 13/03/2007 by Fiona Woolf

International work is quite a big part of being President of the Law Society. However, it’s mostly not about the glamour and more about hard work – albeit work that is immensely rewarding and, so it seems, delivering real results.

I just hosted a week-long visit by the All India Bar Association to England to show them how a liberalised legal sector works. I had a session with them explaining the benefits that would result and giving many assurances that we were not interested in appearing in court.

An article in The Times of India on Friday 9 March headlined “Bar panel okay with foreign law firms…” in large type described the position as a “significant U-turn”.

In smaller type it said “…but will seek safeguards and reciprocity” – which we are comfortable with and will continue to work on. I believe it’s more a case of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ liberalisation will take place now.

There’s been a lot more going on too in recent weeks. I met with the Bundesrechtsanswaltkammer in Berlin to ally their fears around the reform of legal services here in the UK; spent a grey Saturday in Vienna with other European Bar leaders at a meeting organised by the Council of European Bars; had lunch with the general counsel of the World Bank; talked to the Minister of Justice of Papua New Guinea; been invited to talk about human rights in Colombia; was the keynote speaker at the IBA Corporate Counsel Conference, attended by a lot of international in-house lawyers; and, to top it off, I debated the future of the legal profession last Saturday morning in London with 40 members of the Barcelona Bar.

But what’s all this frenzied activity for?

• Pressing for liberalisation and market access for English solicitors;
• making it easier for us to do business in other jurisdictions (whether we have offices there or not);
• facilitating cross-border transactions, particularly where codes of conduct conflict;
• fighting to uphold legal professional privilege and other principles we hold dear;
• promoting our cause to European institutions (particularly the European Commission in directive-making mode) and governments;
• helping lawyers and bars/law societies in emerging economies to develop and embrace English law or English legal concepts;
• facilitating international human rights and pro bono work (for example, by contributing needs assessments);
• promoting English law and the excellence of our profession;
• showing the human face of the profession and building relationships with key stakeholders; and
• providing networking opportunities for our guys to meet foreign lawyers.

So what does this add up to? Well, safeguarding and enhancing something approaching £3bn of earnings. This is not simply 'big firm' territory; a third of sole practitioners say they do international work.

If the Law Society didn’t do this work, the Government would have to do it. That is why we work closely with the Department of Trade & Industry and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and get brownie points from it for the profession.

This work is important because there are so many jurisdictions that are still quite protectionist or have old-fashioned rules that get in the way of the needs of our sophisticated (or not so sophisticated) clients.

There is also so much work we could do on the international human rights front. We could devote all our resources to helping lawyers in developing countries to stand up and be respected and yet it would be a drop in the ocean.

We cannot fight every battle nor do everything all at once. We must prioritise and we will work closely with the profession in doing so – that also goes for our work to build new services to help you develop your practices and careers.