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Akron Law sponsors globalization of the legal industry lecture
RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter
Published: April 25, 2019
The Brennan Courtroom lecture hall at the University of Akron School of Law was at capacity for the inaugural lecture in the Miller Becker Center for Responsibility series on “Lawyers and the Globalization of Legal Services.”
Renowned Penn State Dickinson Law professor Laurel S. Terry delivered an energetic and highly informative 45-minute lecture entitled “International Developments, International Networks, and their Impact on U.S. Legal Ethics.”
As introduced by Miller Becker head Jack Sahl, Terry is the “go-to expert in this field, a top research scholar, and the only three-time Fulbright Scholar I know of.”
Terry’s lecture emphasized two primary points.
The first focused on developing a large-scale international conversation among law firms, legal networks and the bodies that regulate the legal industry around the world on what appropriate ethical considerations have to be to make the varied pieces of the legal industry around the globe work together with a minimum of pain. At the center of this discussion, she said, is the necessity of transparency among the participants.
The second primary point of her talk discussed the framework of this conversation, one in which Terry is a notable participant.
Terry discussed at length how Ohio in general and Akron in particular have a significant percentage of income derived from the global economy. Ohio, for instance, exported more than $54 billion worth of goods last year alone. And with virtually every transaction, she noted, there was an attorney or attorneys who put work into the deal somewhere. In addition, many Ohio firms are participating in developing international legal networks.
All of those attorneys are regulated in various ways by their home jurisdictions. In most countries the attorneys are regulated nationally. In fact, she said, people have remarked how unusual it is to have U.S. attorneys regulated by state. But that they are.
Terry noted four forums that are engaged in these discussions around the world: GATS, FATF, PMBR and ABS.
GATS: The General Agreement on Trade in Services is a services treaty among 160 nations that regulates service industries, including law. Terry said that all signatories have made promises about lawyer regulation.
FATF: The Financial Action Task Forced is an international effort to combat money laundering and other illegal financial transactions, although it has no enforcement power.
PMBR: Proactive management-based regulation. This is an effort to bring best practices to law firms by providing a checklist of actions to match firms against. Started in Australia and New Zealand, it is starting to be accepted in other places, including a couple of U.S. jurisdictions.
ABS is the overall nomenclature for the new business structures that law firms are allowed to participate in, currently in the UK, Australia and other common law countries that includes public trading of firm shares, the ability to be in business with non-lawyers, and other allowances that are not available to U.S. firms.
Terry said that lawyers and regulators affiliated with all of these new movements inside and outside of the legal industry are all trying to figure out how it all should be regulated.
Her suggestion, which was the final part of her presentation, was a six-part framework for analyzing what international regulations might be appropriate in this new frontier of the law business.
The entire framework, eight pages long, is available on the Miller Becker website. Here is a brief overview.
First question: Who regulates lawyers? As mentioned, this depends on jurisdiction.
Next: Whom (or What) should be the object of the regulation. This is a question that is arising because of changes in the legal industry that can allow non-lawyers to provide “legal services”. This is a change that is more evident in the UK, for example, but which is also infiltrating the U.S. Does the Ohio Supreme Court have the right to regulate a legal advice app from California?
Then When should regulators act? Can regulators be so proactive that they can require a law firm to adhere to certain best practices, or can they only react after the firm falls apart?
Fourth, Where are lawyers regulated? This is a particular question for attorneys practicing in other countries, particularly when there is international litigation or trade deal negotiations. Which jurisdiction obtains in regulating those attorneys?
Fifth, Why should lawyers be regulated? What is the efficacy of any given regulation.
Finally, How should lawyers be regulated internationally. Given that there will probably never be one world-wide regulatory body, how do these rules get enforced?
Anyone interested in digging further into these issues can go to the Miller Becker website or download Terry’s site at https://works.bepress.com/laurel_terry/.