3,000 lawyers to attend IBA conference as first female president waves farewell

GLOBAL LAW IN 2020: survey of bar leaders predicts non-legal competition for property work

Hundreds of City lawyers will descend on South Africa next week for the International Bar Association's (IBA) biennial conference.

Around 3,000 lawyers are expected to be in Durban, confounding predictions that a post-11 September fear of flying would keep people away.

The conference also marks the end of IBA president Dianna Kempe's two-year term, the first by a woman lawyer.

Ms Kempe, an English-born barrister who practises in Bermuda, told the Gazette this week that she had achieved her vision for the IBA.

She said the IBA had shifted its focus in pro bono work, becoming heavily involved in training and technical assistance projects, as well as rule of law programmes around the world.

The IBA has also just fulfilled her goal of creating a global directory of non-governmental organisations offering assistance to those involved in rule of law work, thanks to a grant from the United States Institute of Peace.

Her plan to introduce a distance-learning programme, which is primarily aimed at lawyers in developing countries without access to professional development, will be launched in Durban in conjunction with the English College of Law (see [2001] Gazette, 22 November, 6), while the world woman lawyer's conference - which was held for the first time in London last year - is to be repeated next year, also in London.

Ms Kempe said the IBA still had some way to go in terms of improving transparency, although radical reform of its organisation - set to be rubber-stamped in Durban - should improve this, she said.

While it had made a difference to the IBA to have a woman president, Ms Kempe noted that there were no women coming up behind her in the association's leadership.

Executive director Mark Ellis said Ms Kempe had made 'a real impact' on the association, and praised her strong support for the human rights agenda and rule of law programmes.

Emilio Cardenas, a one-time Argentinian ambassador to the United Nations, will be named IBA president in Durban, while solicitor Francis Neate, a former Slaughter and May partner who is now general counsel at merchant bank Schroders, will become vice-president.

Meanwhile, an IBA survey of global bar leaders about the future direction of the profession, seen by the Gazette, has expressed pessimism about the future of conveyancing and other property work.

The survey, conducted by the IBA's 2020 commission, found that many doubted such work would be the sole preserve of the legal profession by 2020.

In other findings, none of the 47 bar leaders who replied thought that law firms would be able to accept external investment by non-lawyers by 2020, while almost a fifth thought that the profession would be regulated by supra-national or world-wide bar associations by that time.

The survey will go before the IBA council meeting in Durban.

Neil Rose