Many business, economic, and legal trends drive attorneys to adopt and expand international perspectives in their practices. These trends simultaneously heighten the ethical mandate that attorneys be competent to serve and advise clients on transnational legal matters.
Global economic integration and worldwide markets; the rampant popularity and ubiquitous nature of online businesses, e-commerce, and social networks; rapid advances in telecommunications and other technologies; and increasingly multinational and globally distributed workforces are just a few of these trends.
Add to these trends the rapidly-evolving and voluminous bodies of international and foreign domestic laws and of influential international soft law. Add to these the number and range of international and foreign legal regimes and the development of the rule of law worldwide.
These trends mean that virtually every legal practitioner has been or will be asked to represent clients on matters involving or impacted by international or foreign domestic law or both. These trends drive an urgent need for attorneys to ensure that they competently handle transnational legal matters in accordance with their ethical obligations.
The state and other Rules of Professional Conduct that govern attorney ethics require that, for each transnational legal matter, attorneys must ensure that they have or can obtain the requisite international legal education and skills and that they exhibit the thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary to the matter. See, e.g., American Bar Association Model Rule of Professional Conduct 1.1 and comments.
Whether attorneys act reasonably in a particular transnational legal matter depends upon a comparison to the broader community of reasonably prudent and competent international legal practitioners. See Rule 1.0(h); Rule 1.1 & comment 5. Among the broader required areas of competence are international law, foreign domestic law, conflict of laws, and comparative international law.
Association with competent international attorneys and partnering with foreign attorneys are among the avenues to ethical competence in transnational legal matters available to practitioners.
Look for more posts here on the subject of attorney competence and compliance with legal ethics rules in international practice. My article on this important subject is pending publication in the Idaho State Bar journal, The Advocate, in October.
To request more information, please post a comment here.
No comments:
Post a Comment