Seven professional challenges in a handy list

In difficult times, it is easy - for me at any rate - to be critical of practically everyone and everything. But I have found a product to praise. I admire the International Bar Association’s (IBA) recent ‘Legal Agenda 2023/28’.

The IBA document lists the most important issues facing the legal profession over the next five years. I can only judge it from the perspective of the UK and the rest of Europe, whose jurisdictions I know best. And from that angle, the IBA has come up with an excellent list.

The Gazette has already summarised the seven key areas it identifies. Briefly, they are: artificial intelligence; environmental, social and governance (ESG); client and mandate acceptance; talent attraction and retention; the perception of the profession; delivering legal advice across multiple jurisdictions; and promoting and defending the rule of law.

Before assuming that a document like this has nothing to do with a practising lawyers’ day-to-day concerns, a condensed and basic list of lawyers’ challenges can be of practical value, regardless of its use in policy-making. For instance, if you have to give a speech to your local law society, to an outside body, to a partners’ meeting or student body, if you are facing a job interview, you may want to refer to some of the knotty topics facing us. Well, the IBA’s brief summary lays out the issues wonderfully.

So what is so good about it?

First, I liked that AI was top of the list. This must be its first year right at the top – I doubt that even a year ago it would have been in first place. I know from speaking to others that many solicitors now raise it frequently with their Law Society representatives. Bars need to respond with action.

Second, I liked that ESG was second, with climate concerns included. Action over climate is politically controversial in many countries, with our own government viewing it as a wedge issue for the next election. However, the Gazette’s coverage of the recent Conveyancing Association pledges on net zero, together with the Law Society’s National Property Law conference agenda items on climate change, show that, once again, these concerns have percolated beyond the big firms to all sizes of practice.

Finally, I like that the IBA list tackles head-on the reputational challenges facing us, under ‘Client and mandate acceptance’. It does not repeat the argument about not identifying lawyers with their clients’ causes, true as that principle remains. In my view, the principle rings hollow nowadays when so many lawyers deliberately identify themselves with their clients’ interests on social media. Rather, the IBA anchors the work for unpopular clients or controversial causes under the principle of the independence of the legal profession and our role in the rule of law.

But so much goodwill is making me queasy. I have criticisms of the IBA document, too. In particular, although I found its summary of each challenge well-expressed, I found the supporting paragraphs raised some questions.

So, the section on AI listed the various difficulties it poses, but not the challenge to the very regulation of lawyers, which may turn out to be the most serious of all.

Next, the section on cross-border practice looks at the matter from the perspective of exporting countries only, as if the concerns of the big multi-jurisdictional law firms are the only ones which count. So it sees the fact that each jurisdiction has its own framework of qualification and governance for the legal profession as an obstacle.

I am a member of the IBA’s own International Trade in Legal Services Committee (ITILS), and I can tell you that this view is rejected by many countries, which do not see their priority as being to make things even easier for foreign law firms to do work in their countries, at the expense of their own law firms. What the IBA sees as an obstacle is seen by others as a cultural inheritance and an embedded part of a legal system, to be nurtured and protected. Phrasing the challenge in the way that the IBA has may make it more difficult to solve what it sees as the problem.

Finally, which doubtless helps to explain the framing of the cross-border point, the IBA says that it has developed its list of challenges following discussions with representatives of leading international and national law firms, including meetings in New York and London. It does not say that it has consulted its own governance structure, namely its own committees. I am a member of the IBA bars’ Policy Committee and ITILS committee, and the first I knew of the ‘Legal Agenda’ was when I saw its press release on publication.

But I am a master at bickering. Overall, offer congratulations on an excellent list.

Jonathan Goldsmith is Law Society Council member for EU & International, chair of the Law Society’s Policy & Regulatory Affairs Committee and a member of its board. All views expressed are personal and are not made in his capacity as a Law Society Council member, nor on behalf of the Law Society