Large international commercial law firms should show more respect for basic ethical values or leave the profession, the head of Europe's lawyers' lobbying group told the International Bar Association's annual conference in Auckland this week.

German lawyer Hans-Jürgen Hellwig, the president of the Council of the Bars and Law Societies of the European Union (CCBE), lashed out at the major City practices for being hypocritical in their approach to 'core values'. He said: 'Big firms happily invoke core values - such as legal professional privilege - when it suits them. But they pay little respect when it comes to the obligations flowing from those core values.'


Mr Hellwig was specifically critical of the attitude of global law firms to conflicts of interest. He said there were examples of major commercial players 'violating the rules of particular jurisdictions because those rules are inconsistent with the self-defined rules that those firms have drawn up themselves'.


He said he did not accept the argument that a liberal view of conflict of interest was acceptable because large clients dictated it. Likewise, he dismissed suggestions that the rules needed to be liberalised because of the ever-increasing size of firms. 'The rules are not there for individual clients, but for the protection of the wider justice system,' he said. 'Growing large should not be done on the basis that the ethics rules will not be applicable.'


Mr Hellwig said there was an increasingly popular view that unless the global firms complied with core principles, dramatic action should be taken. He suggested that larger firms could still provide legal advice, but that they would not be members of the legal profession. 'That prospect frightens many business lawyers, and it might be enough to change their views.'


Law Society President Edward Nally defended the position of the global practices. 'My experience is that the large City firms are almost paranoid about behaving ethically,' he said, adding that Mr Hellwig exhibited an 'alarming lack of confidence and faith in our profession'.


He was supported by Ben Greer of Atlanta law firm Alston & Bird, who warned that there was a danger of characterising commerciality and ethics as being incompatible.