Common Skills: English lawyers should be open to other styles of practice and law

One of Europe's leading lawyers has called on EU practitioners to adopt a more collaborative approach to legal practice, with neither the common law nor the codified continental style taking superiority.


Portuguese lawyer Manuel Cavaleiro Brandao, the new President of the Council of the Bars and Law Societies of the EU (CCBE), told the Gazette that continental lawyers were concerned at what they perceived as the inexorable advance of common law practices.


'We are very conscious of how the practice of law is being influenced by the Anglo-Saxon culture. Not just in the drafting of contracts, but everywhere else,' said Mr Brandao, hinting that English lawyers should be open to other styles of practice and law. 'It would be reasonable for Anglo-Saxon lawyers to accept some evolution. I don't know whether that is feasible, but it is my hope.'


Mr Brandao - a former Christian Democrat MP in the Portuguese parliament who now practises in Porto - criticised the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, for promoting the notion of common law dominance. 'I have heard Lord Falconer say how proud he is of the superiority of his own legal culture. He implied that we should forget any form of European contract law. Two days before that, I heard the Austrian bar president saying we are being invaded by the Anglo-Saxon legal culture and we can't accept it.'



Such polarised views would only alienate clients, said Mr Brandao: 'Citizens and companies moving freely around the EU need common tools. European citizenship needs a European lawyer working with common tools. We can't go on without making a move in that direction.'


He emphasised the CCBE's policy of attempting to harmonise an ethics code across the EU, forecasting that a 'statement of core values' would appear by the end of this year.


Moreover, Mr Brandao lashed out at European Commission messages in relation to liberalising the legal profession and, instead, praised the recent Clementi reforms in England and Wales for providing 'a more consistent approach'. Nonetheless, he reiterated the CCBE's view that Clementi's proposals to allow outside capital investment in law firms were misguided.


Mr Brandao defended the relevance of the CCBE, maintaining that even in an EU of 25 jurisdictions, the organisation could confidently represent lawyers across the union. Although he acknowledged the need for compromise: 'With 25 voices, consensus is becoming a more distant Utopia. Increasingly, delegations will have to accept that we will have to vote more often and that we will have to have majority decisions. This could present greater difficulties for some individual delegations than for the CCBE as a whole. We will try to accommodate some differences of opinion, but we have to adopt an evolutionary approach.'