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I voted to remain in the European Union, and as something of a middle way between remaining and a hard, no deal, BREXIT, I'm today in favour of something of a pick'n mix Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Lichtenstein, European Economic Area membership with, for example, Fisheries being brought back under UK control, (Norway), Agriculture being brought back under UK control, (Norway & Switzerland), and much tighter control over immigration, (Switzerland & Lichtenstein), in exchange for little or no direct say in setting the rules of the game, (ie no commissioner, no membership of the Council of Ministers, and no Euro-MPs, although with plenty of realpolitik clout due to our sheer size and international connections, and, who knows, with maybe having British judges along with the others on the European Court of Justice), and I fully accept that the UK Government has to make a hard choice between either a lot more controls between Britain and Northern Ireland, ie protecting the All Ireland single market, or reneging on the backstop, ie protecting the UK single market, but if there is one thing that I always profoundly disagreed with and that was the ease with which foreign lawyers could re-qualify in a new jurisdiction.

As some people know, I work a lot with Spain. I know that the English legal system is very, very, different to the Spanish legal system. From my own personal family background I know that the law and legal practice between two countries that ostensibly have the same legal system like Holland and Spain varies enormously ... and that is without taking into account the fact that different languages are spoken in different countries.

I simply haven't found that Spanish lawyers who have been for all practical purposes given the title of solicitor have somehow, miraculously, really turned into solicitors, any more than I have seen English solicitors in Spain turn miraculously into Spanish lawyers.

It was, and, in my opinion, always should have continued to be the case that people with Spanish nationality could qualify to be solicitors if they passed the same exams as everybody else in England & Wales and did their two years articles, and solicitors should be able to set up shop in Madrid working as solicitors advising on English legal matters.

Put another way, a hard BREXIT threatens to have the baby thrown out with the bathwater, for example, stopping solicitors with only a British passport from setting up shop in Paris and advising on English legal matters. In a world where international trade is huge this is something worth fighting for, and the Law Society / Solicitors Regulation Authority should, in my opinion, stop fantasising about how you can turn a born, bred, and fully trained Greek lawyer into a genuine Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England & Wales by a process akin to osmosis by simply living and working, (often in Greek law), in England & Wales for a number of years.

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