International Disciplinary Standards For Lawyers Necessary, Say US Experts

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

22 August 2005

Speaking at the American Bar Association's annual conference earlier this month, William Smith, president of the US National Organisation of Bar Counsel and General Counsel suggested that the lack of international disciplinary rules is a stumbling block to the creation of transatlantic alliances between law firms.

According to the UK Law Society's Law Gazette, which reported on the meeting, Mr Smith announced that:

"We have to come up with a system of international reciprocal disciplinary protocols. We must be able to prosecute foreign lawyers who violate local practice rules and we must be satisfied and confident that those prosecutions will be honoured in the offending lawyer’s home country. We don’t want to wait until we have a crisis; the time to act is now."

However, secretary-general of the Council of the Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE), Jonathan Goldsmith responded by pointing out that cross-border practice in the EU "has led to very few discipline problems".

He went on to add that:

"Originally, we thought there would be more problems as firms established themselves in other member states, but there have effectively been no problems at all."

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