Bar Admission and Globalization

Last evening, I attended our monthly meeting of the Committee on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar of the New York State Bar Association. We had a very interesting report from Prof. Randy Herz of New York University School of Law about the activities of the "Outcomes" Committee he is chairing in response to some initiatives of the US Department of Education regarding the role of the American Bar Association in the accreditation of law schools in the United States.

As I was listening to Prof. Herz's excellent report, it occurred to me that, in world of globalized legal services, bar admission is really not considered as being very important. If you look at the mobility of legal talent these days, you see announcements in the legal press of this or that lawyer (whose bar admission is not even mentioned) going from Hong Kong (for example) to a new office in Bahrain (or where ever). The point is, of course, that no one can be admitted everywhere, and, often, law firms and consumers of legal services are more interested in skills and experience than they are in the formalities of bar admission. Thus, an M&A lawyer from New York or London, may be needed in Moscow and may never think twice about seeking admission to the local bar.

This clearly does not pose a problem to the consumers of these legal services, because they are all sophisticated users of legal services (and are usually lawyers themselves as in-house GS's or outside law firms) and can easily protect themselves. Hence, bar admission is not a major consideration of the decision to engage a lawyer. Rather, specific skills and experience are.

At the administrative level, the US still seems to be obsessed with local bar admission. However, at the practice level, lawyers move about the country doing deals, meeting clients, taking depositions, etc., without much regard to whether they are admitted in the jurisdiction where the meeting takes place, etc. Internationally, it is even more so. Lawyers open offices in jurisdictions where they have no local bar admission and offer "international legal services" from those offices. This woudl run afoul of most MJP rules in the US. However, there is some precedent for this in the Establishment Directive in the EU.

The EU gives great mobility to EU nationals who are admitted in a member state of their nationality. Such a lawyer can go to any other member state and practice home country law. After three years of such practice, the lawyer can get host country admission without more. That certainly gives a lot of weight to skills and experience.

It will be interesting to see where all this is going.