A global player?

As the International Bar Association debates changes to its internal mechanisms, Jeremy Fleming considers its aspirations to match its human rights work with a global reach

The International Bar Association (IBA) is expected to get a facelift later this year, when structural reforms - if initially approved at an IBA council meeting in Dublin on 1 June - are presented to the organisation's biennial conference in October in Durban (see [2002] Gazette, 16 May, 6).

But when the surgery is over, will the IBA be better able to tout itself as the face of lawyers worldwide, speaking for a global legal community?

The review committee which came up with the reform plan was co-chaired by solicitor Francis Neate, the group legal adviser at merchant bank Schroders who is standing for the IBA vice-presidency.

He says this question is a bit ahead of itself.

'The IBA can only become a global voice if the individual bars and law societies belonging to it want it to be.

On the whole, their willingness has been limited.'

Better than trying to provide a unified voice where there is none, Mr Neate argues, is creating a proper structure within which the differences of opinion can be debated.

He maintains that the restructuring will enable this.

The proposals are for the current sections of the IBA to be brought within two central divisions - called the public and professional interest division and the legal practice division.

Other proposals include introducing an annual conference (currently they take place every two years with the existing sections having their own conferences in the intervening year), and more stability in the succession of executive office-holders.

IBA executive director Mark Ellis says: 'It's always good to take a step back.

Many organisa-tions couldn't bring them-selves to do that, and many wouldn't even try.

The basic plan is to streamline the structure of the IBA.

But with or without the restructuring, our strengths are fundamental.'

Mr Neate agrees to the extent that the structure is less important than the quality of people working within in.

IBA president Dianna Kempe QC - senior partner of Bermuda-based Appleby Spurling & Kempe - predicts that the structural changes will make the IBA more streamlined, but have little impact on the working of the organisation, or the 'quite significant changes' that the organisation has undergone over the past 16 months, since Mr Ellis took over.

She says: 'Mark brought funding experience on a sustained basis to the IBA.

In the past that was limited, but now we have much more structured funding proposals and much better access to funds as a consequence.'

Mr Ellis, a US lawyer, cut his teeth running the American Bar Association's central and eastern European initiative, which promotes human rights and democracy.

Through his experience, the IBA has gain access to private funders such as the George Soros Foundation, the Open Society Institute (a US-based charity) and governments - notably of the US, UK and Sweden.

Just last week, the Swedish government donated $75,000 to support the IBA's task force on international terrorism.

Ms Kempe says this funding flow has been seen most visibly in the human rights and pro bono initiatives orchestrated by the IBA's human rights institute - hardly a surprise given Mr Ellis's background.

There are currently ten major projects under way, such as the investigative delegations sent to Malawi just last week and also Swaziland to assess the current state of the judiciary and legal profession in both countries.

Mr Ellis adds: 'The level of support that the human rights institute is receiving is a measure of the success of its work.'

The other major change says Ms Kempe is publicity.

'We are now communicating more and raising our profile.'

The only other international legal grouping of note is the Union International des Avocats (UIA), which is widely regarded as a largely francophone-led organisation; the IBA, by contrast, has often been accused of being too dominated by the US and UK.

However, the current UIA president is Nicholas Stewart QC, head of chambers at Hardwicke Building in London.

He explains where the two organisations differ: 'For a start we are multi-cultural rather than francophone.

We have three languages - English, French and Spanish as our official tongues - and we have strong memberships among lawyers who speak all three.'

There is bound to be some rivalry between the IBA and the UIA, according to Mr Stewart, but he says that the two organisations differ in ethos: 'We're multi-lingual, whereas the IBA - for practical purposes - works in English.

We appeal to some bars and lawyers, and they appeal to others.

But I don't think that we have less influence, even if we have fewer members.' But this is arguably not a widely shared view.

Mr Ellis says: 'I don't view the UIA as a competitor.

I've got respect for that organisation, and I've been involved with them.

I'd like to see collaboration and co-operation; mostly the organisations are working towards the same things, but the IBA will continue to be an association that reaches to members from all over the world.'

The IBA has 180 bar and law society members, and 16,000 individual lawyer members.

The UIA has 250 bar and law society members (including city bars and so on), and 'thousands' of members.

One senior commentator - who declined to be named - said: 'I occasionally think it's absurd to have two organisations like this.

On the other hand, they represent different cultures.

You see people at the UIA who you would never see at the IBA.

But there could be no closer affiliation between the two unless the IBA used more than English as an official language.'

The UIA, though, has a significantly lower profile in human rights work than the IBA.

Mr Stewart says: 'The UIA has always given great prominence to human rights.

We have consultant status at the United Nations, and can feed our views directly to the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.'

Mr Stewart explains why there may be a move by the IBA and UIA to promote their human rights work: 'Many of the large legal firms now provide a global services network, and this was in some sense the role of our global organisations.

Much of the training that was offered by the global organisations is now organised in-house across the globe by these firms.

But in human rights there are opportunities to bring our experience to the table and make the most of our cultural diversity.'

Ms Kempe says human rights initiatives have helped the IBA gain a reputation as being 'next only to Amnesty' in the field.

'Amnesty's brief is wider, but in terms of rule of law issues, we're their peer - we're able to do things jointly, and feed off each other, and I don't think that they think of us as second rate.'

Mr Neate points out the limits to the human rights work: 'First, funding is obviously limited, and the work is very political.

Work in human rights can easily become perceived as politically sensitive and there is a need to tread carefully.'

Traditionally, the IBA has been primarily a networking and conferencing organisation, and much of its income has been derived from this.

Around 3,000 lawyers - including several hundred from the top City firms - attend the biennial conferences, which are big money-spinners.

With this in mind, the commentator suggests that the IBA's proposed structural reforms might not go far enough.

He says: 'There are several structural faults with the IBA.

The problem is that its profile comes from the bars themselves, whereas the funding comes from business lawyers...

In looking at business issues and legal problems - as opposed to human rights issues - it relies too heavily on voluntary work from lawyers.'

Nonetheless, Mr Ellis says: 'The IBA is an association of business lawyers, and our engagement with human rights is a reflection of the fact that business and the rule of law are inseparable, and without these building blocks business cannot exist.'

But concentrating on human rights work does not mean that the IBA has taken its eye off the other balls, according to Ms Kempe.

The issue of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the inclusion of legal services in the next round of liberalisation talks has been on its agenda for some years now.

'The WTO has asked us to do a seminar before all of its trade and capital members in Geneva in July in relation to the ongoing GATS [General Agreement on Trade in Services] negotiations,' she notes.

'We're taking the lead on that and I don't believe that any other organisations are in that position.'

Solicitor Jonathan Goldsmith, secretary-general of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, agrees that the IBA's role in the GATS negotiations has been 'very helpful'.

He says: 'Earlier in the year, the IBA organised a useful delegation to the WTO in Geneva which gave lawyers the chance to meet members of the delegations there; they will be launching an extremely helpful GATS handbook shortly at their next meeting in Dublin which sets out the relevance of the GATS to all the bars; and in July they have this meeting in Geneva.'

Mr Goldsmith adds: 'They have played a positive neutral role, and have been helpful for European lawyers, for whom the GATS are important as they are both exporters and importers of legal services.'

So what of the future? Mr Ellis says: 'The premise that the IBA will speak with one voice is something that probably cannot be achieved literally, because of the varieties and difference among our membership.

But the IBA's role is to be the place where all those different voices can come together.'

As an example, he cites the role of facilitator for the code of conduct of the International Criminal Court currently being played by the IBA.

'We have the capability to bring together the experts, reach out to all our membership for their thoughts on a draft code that I'm not sure any other organisation could do.'

Mr Neate is ambitious about the IBA's long-term strategy.

He says: 'We ought definitely to aspire to be the global voice of lawyers, and - to the extent that there is any global voice for lawyers - we are certainly it.'

'I don't think there's any doubt about us being a global voice,' adds Ms Kempe.The senior commentator says: 'It both is and it isn't a global voice - but it is because, well, who else is?'