The Anglo-Saxon legal profession must make itself heard if it wants to see market liberalisation in countries such as mainland China and South Korea, a leading lawyer in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has advised.
Hamid Mamdouh, senior counsel at the WTO, told Legal Week that the reason why accountancy firms had managed to remove barriers to the expansion of their practice around the world was because of successful government lobbying efforts. Law firms, he said, had not engaged in similar efforts.
"To make a difference in WTO negotiations on liberalisation of the legal profession in protectionist countries, legal professionals have to make clear that they are an important constituency," he said.
Mamdouh, a guest speaker at the International Bar Association's Amsterdam Conference, said that from December national professional service organisations should start making requests to foreign governments for market liberalisation under the auspices of the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services.
The Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, has recently committed his department to fighting for UK firms' interests within government and abroad. But many countries such as China, Japan, South Korea and India still places restrictions on the activities of foreign firms.
Mamdouh would not comment directly on individual countries' restrictive practices, but he praised Singapore for its recent initiative allowing foreign firms to practice local law by applying for joint venture licences with local firms.
He said the joint ventures provided a chance for Singaporean firms to work with big international firms in a way that did not threaten their culture.
Mamdouh suggested that the International Bar Association (IBA) should encourage lawyers to lobby their governments to take up their interests at home.
"The WTO is an inter-governmental framework, and the IBA can galvanise its members," he said.