This special issue of the Comparative Law Yearbook of International Business addresses an important development in the globalization of international law practices, the outsourcing legal services. Practitioners from the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Gibraltar, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States address a range of issues, including outsourcing legal issues from a law department in a company to a law firm, the monopoly of a country’s law firm for legal advice, sending legal advice to partner law firms abroad, and utilizing foreign providers of basic legal and transactional services (such as services offered in India and The Philippines) for routine legal tasks.

This special issue of the Comparative Law Yearbook of International Business addresses an important development in the globalization of international law practices, the outsourcing legal services. Practitioners from the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Gibraltar, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States address a range of issues, including outsourcing legal issues from a law department in a company to a law firm, the monopoly of a country's law firm for legal advice, sending legal advice to partner law firms abroad, and utilizing foreign providers of basic legal and transactional services (such as services offered in India and The Philippines) for routine legal tasks.

Economic globalization is transforming practically every service sector. The legal industry that has long remained insulated too has not remained untouched by the effects of globalization. The outsourcing of legal services in the past one decade has transformed the legal landscape. Legal outsourcing to India is becoming increasingly popular among U.S. and European law firms and corporations. This book broadly seeks to discuss three main topics surrounding legal process outsourcing (LPO): its emerging trends, the legal challenges it raises and the hitherto unrecognized potential it holds. Firstly, this book clarifies concepts of LPO and its operating models practiced by U.S. and U.K. law firms and corporations. Secondly, the outsourcing of legal services creates significant challenges for ethics rules including conflict of interests, attorney-client privilege, supervision and fee sharing. Thirdly, this research explores the hidden potential of LPO to improve access to justice. This book develops an altogether new proposal where Indian LPO professionals could help alleviate the access to justice problem among indigent and low-income populations of the United States.

In recent decades, there has been a groundbreaking evolution in technology. Every year, technology not only advances, but it also spreads throughout industries. Many fields such as law, education, business, engineering, and more have adopted these advanced technologies into their toolset. These technologies have a vastly different effect ranging from these different industries. The Handbook of Research on Applying Emerging Technologies Across Multiple Disciplines examines how technologies impact many different areas of knowledge. This book combines a solid theoretical approach with many practical applications of new technologies within many disciplines. Covering topics such as computer-supported collaborative learning, machine learning algorithms, and blockchain, this text is essential for technologists, IT specialists, programmers, computer scientists, engineers, managers, administrators, academicians, students, policymakers, and researchers.

How attorneys' work is deprofessionalized, downgraded, and controlled through part-time and temporary assignments.

As one of the ’learned’ professions requiring advanced learning and high principles, law enjoys a special standing in society. In return for its status and rank, the legal profession is expected to exhibit the highest levels of honesty, trust and morality, the very values which underpin the legal system itself. This, in turn, entrusts to legal education a particular problem of addressing, not only the substantive elements of the body of law, but a means through which the characteristics of the ’calling’ of law are imparted and instilled. At a time when the very essence of the legal profession is under threat, this book calls for a realignment of the legal curriculum and pedagogies so as to emphasise the development of culture over industry; character over eloquence; and calling over skill. Chapters are grouped around the core content and key themes of Curiosity, Calling, Character and Conscientiousness, Contract, and Culture. The volume includes contributions from leading experts, drawn internationally and from other professional disciplines in order to present alternative approaches aimed at tackling common issues, providing insight, and provoking debate.

While emphasizing that lawyers fulfill a vital but often misunderstood public function in society, The American Legal Profession: The Myths and Realities of Practicing Law dispels some of the common misconceptions about the legal profession to show that the reality of being a lawyer is much different from what many students believe it to be. Many students know little about what law school is like or how it differs from undergraduate study, and this book corrects common myths about graduating law school and life after passing the bar. This brief primer is a nuts-and-bolts analysis of what it is really like to go into the legal profession, from start to finish, giving students considering a career in law a realistic overview of their potential legal careers.

The world's legal professions have undergone dramatic changes in the 30 years since publication of the landmark three-volume Lawyers in Society, which launched comparative sociological studies of lawyers. This is the first of two volumes in which scholars from a wide range of disciplines, countries and cultures document and analyse those changes. The present volume presents reports on 46 countries, with broad coverage of North America, Western Europe, Latin America, Asia, Australia, North Africa and the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and former communist countries. These national reports address: the impact of globalisation and neoliberalism on national legal professions (the relationship of lawyers and their professional associations to the state and tensions between state and citizenship); changes in lawyer demography (rapidly growing numbers and the profession's efforts to retain control, the entry of women and obstacles to full gender equality, ethnic diversity); legal education (the proliferation of institutions and pedagogic innovation); the regulation of lawyers; structures of production (especially the growth of large firms and the impact of technology and paraprofessionals); the distribution of lawyers across roles; and access to justice (state-funded legal aid and pro-bono services). The juxtaposition of the reports reveals the dramatic transformations of professional rationales, labour markets, and working practices and the multiple contingencies of the role of lawyers in societies experiencing increasing juridification within a new geopolitical order.

For centuries, law was used to subordinate women and exclude them from the public sphere, so it cannot be expected to become a source of equality instantaneously or without resistance from benchmark men—that is, those who are white, heterosexual, able-bodied and middle class. Equality, furthermore, was attainable only in the public sphere, whereas the private sphere was marked as a site of inequality; a wife, children and servants could never be the equals of the master. Despite their ambivalence about the role of law and its contradictions, women and Others felt that they had no alternative but to look to it as a means of liberation. This skewed patriarchal heritage, the subtext of this collection of essays, has continued to impede the quest for equality by women and Others. It informs not only gender relations in the private sphere, as illustrated by domestic violence and sexual assault, but also the status of women in the public sphere. Despite the fact that women have entered the paid workforce—including the professions—in large numbers, they are still expected to assume responsibility for the preponderance of society’s caring. The essays show how maternal and caring roles, which are still largely viewed as belonging to an unregulated private sphere, continue to be invoked to detract from the authority of the feminine in the public sphere. The promise of antidiscrimination legislation in overcoming the heritage of the past is also shown to be somewhat hollow.

The services sector is key to economic growth, competitiveness, and poverty alleviation. Comprising more than two-thirds of the world economy, services are now commonly traded across borders, helped by technological progress and the increased mobility of persons. In recent years, a number of developing countries have looked at trade in services as a means to both respond to domestic supply shortages and to diversify and boost exports. Any country can tap into the trade potential of services, but not every country can become a services hub across sectors. The opening of the services sector potentially comes with large benefits, but also fears and costs that should not be overlooked. This book provides useful guidelines for the assessment of a country s trade potential, and a roadmap for successful opening and export promotion in select services sectors. It looks at both the effects of increased imports and exports, and provides concrete examples of developing country approaches that have either succeeded or failed to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks of opening. It focuses on sectors that have been rarely analyzed through the trade lens, and/or have a fast growing trade potential for developing countries. These sectors are: accounting, construction, distribution, engineering, environmental, health, information technology, and legal services. This book is designed for non-trade specialists to understand how trade can help improve access to key services in developing countries, and for trade specialists to understand the specific characteristics of each individual sector. It will be a useful tool for governments to design successful trade opening or promotion strategies, and for the private sector and consumers to advocate sound domestic policy reforms accompanying an offensive trade agenda.