Practice Rights: European lawyers welcome 'positive' debate on access to American market

Hopes that states across the US may open up to foreign lawyers were last week boosted by support from leading judges.


The Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ) was told by the chief justices of New York, Ohio and Florida that the foreign legal consultant regimes operating in their jurisdictions had produced no problems.


Each state's supreme court decides whether foreign lawyers should be allowed to work within their borders under a foreign legal consultant rule, and to date little more than half have done so.


Last week's CCJ conference in Florida invited a delegation from the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) to discuss the issue. CCBE secretary-general Jonathan Goldsmith said it was a significant development in the long-running push to open up the US.


'It's not that tomorrow all 50 states will up to a foreign legal consultant rule,' he said. 'But we got to the heart of the regulatory structure within the US, and the debate has got going in a very positive way.' He was joined at the conference by leading German lawyer Hans-Jürgen Hellwig, a former CCBE president.


Alison Hook, the Law Society's director of international, welcomed the visit. She said: 'The state supreme courts are the key to opening up practice rights in the US so it is extremely useful that the CCBE is speaking to the Conference of Chief Justices and that those with a foreign lawyer regime are prepared to encourage others to take this route.'


In recent years, the CCJ has supported the American Bar Association in its efforts to encourage states to allow greater domestic cross-border practice - lawyers in one state are generally prohibited from practising in another - and it is felt that such moves will ultimately benefit foreign lawyers too.