Cross-border practice code moves a step closer as IBA sets up task force

COMMERCIAL WORK: chairman hopes to make initial recommendations next September

Plans to create a code that would facilitate cross-border commercial legal practice all over the world were launched this week by the International Bar Association (IBA) at its biennial conference in Durban.

The multi-jurisdictional commercial-practice task force has been set the job of first researching the problems lawyers face when trying to operate in other countries, and then coming up with a solution.

This includes issues such as practice rights and conflicts of regulation.

A showcase session at the start of the Durban conference on contradictory professional duties highlighted the problems lawyers can face when working across borders.

Lawyers can get into difficulties when, for example, they have a duty to report money-laundering suspicions in the country where they are qualified but are required to maintain strict client confidentiality in the jurisdiction where they are working.

Venezuelan lawyer Fernando Pelez-Pier, who is chairing the IBA task force and this week also takes over as the chairman of the association's business-law section, told the Gazette that the practice of law 'has got ahead of the regulation', especially because of the impact of new technologies.

The members of the task force have not yet been named, and its first meeting will not be until December.

But Mr Pelez-Pier said he hoped recommendations would be put to the section's conference in San Francisco next September.

The second phase of the project would be to work on a code of cross-border commercial practice, which, when agreed, would be presented to regulatory authorities in the final phase.

The IBA last attempted to tackle part of this issue in the late 1990s, when it put together a model form of foreign legal-consultant regulation for countries to adopt.

However, problems with forming a consensus meant that the final version was largely ignored.

Mr Pelez-Pier said the legal world 'has changed quite a lot' since that time.

The task force will also work with the IBA's World Trade Organisation group, which is attempting to educate governments about lawyers and their roles ahead of the WTO investigating cross-border legal practice.

Neil Rose