Free trade talks between the EU and US are almost certain to end with agreement freeing up the movement of lawyers, a leading European figure in the campaign to remove barriers has predicted.

Louis-Bernard Buchman, chair of the International Legal Services committee of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE), said in Brussels yesterday that political will exists on both sides to push a free trade deal through by May next year.

Talks on the free trade agreement open in Washington DC on 8 July.

The agreement is ‘almost certain to have a free movement of legal services component,’ Buchman said. This is likely to take the form of agreement to allow lawyers to operate as ‘foreign legal consultants’, with restrictions on audience rights and on giving advice on host-country law, he predicted.

Foreign consultant status would be ‘low-hanging fruit’ because 31 US states already have such provisions in place, Buchman said. However he noted that a deal negotiated at a federal level would not bind states.

‘This complicates the problem for the US delegation – we are well aware of that,’ he told journalists.

He said that the question of England and Wales’ alternative business structures – ‘anathema to the US’ – had already come up in preliminary talks and warned that ABS status could be a barrier to firms wanting to take advantage of the free trade agreement. ‘Any UK law firm contemplating a move in that direction should be very cautious of the dangers in future in terms of merger or co-operation with US law firms,’ he said.

To inform the negotiations, Buchman appealed for specific examples of restrictions facing European lawyers wishing to practice in both the US and Japan.