Competition conflict

The CCBE will this week tell the European Commission that competition in and regulation of the legal profession should not be judged by economic criteria alone.

Responding to the commission's consultation on regulation in the professions (see [2003] Gazette, 27 March, 6), the CCBE will point to the European Court of Justice's ruling in Wouters and others v the Dutch Bar Association, which dealt with the Dutch Bar's ban on multi-disciplinary partnerships, in arguing that there are certain principles which have developed out of society's recognition that they are needed to uphold the rule of law whatever their effect on competition.

These include independence, confidentiality and avoiding conflicts of interest.

The combative response - agreed at the meeting in Bergen - attacked the consultation for not putting the legal profession's regulation into a wider public interest context and for not having sufficient research to back up its assertions.

However, addressing the plenary meeting before the debate on the response, Einar Hope - former chief of the Norwegian competition authority - said: 'The legal profession should, as a rule, be subject to the full force of competition law and policy in the same way as other sectors of the economy.' This did not mean there was not scope for some regulation, he added.

CCBE first vice-president Hans-Jrgen Hellwig, a partner at leading German firm Hengeler Mller and vice-president of the German Bar Association, argued that economic criteria cannot be applied to access to justice issues.

He said it should be for economists to justify introducing competition policy into such areas, not the other way around.