Wakili Shupavu kutoka Kenya

MkenyaMzalendo said:

Eish, mbavu sina..

Nyie WaTz hunichekesha sana kwa vile mko sensitive.

Ningetaka kumwalika msjisomee makala haya ndio mu-understand ni kwa nini ninakashifu restrictions za services (which BTW should be illegal under the WTO rules, kikundi kinacho-regulate trade in goods and services ambacho Tz ni member). Haja yangu sio kuwakasirisha ama kuwadharau kwa hivyo wenye wameona kama nimewatukana nawaomba msamaha.

LAW is supposed to be about universal principles: rules that apply without prejudice to a broad category of human beings, regardless of sex, culture or economic status. So in a world where barriers to the transfer of goods, expertise and people are coming down, you might expect that the legal profession would be among the first to fuse into a seamless transnational fraternity. In history, whenever cross-border commerce has flourished, as in medieval Venice, so too have trade lawyers with broad horizons, like the ones pictured above. And today, at least from the vantage-point of the ambitious practitioner, the legal profession seems to have little respect for borders.

A talented graduate from any of the world's top law schools can expect a life of globe-trotting. A single month's work can include writing the small print on a Saudi investment in Africa, helping an Indonesian firm to market its shares in New York, and writing a contract under English law between two companies in Russia. Humanitarian law, as well as the commercial sort, is going global: these days nobody would be surprised to see an American lobby group test the principle of "universal jurisdiction" (for egregious crimes) by trying to get an African dictator arrested on a shopping trip to Europe.

But that is not the whole story. On one hand, international lawyers are at least as ingenious as their customers when it comes to overcoming obstacles to transnational operations; on the other, lawyers have always been skilful at limiting access to their own profession, both within their own countries and globally. And when there are big barriers to professional mobility inside a country, it is less likely to open up to foreign competition.


Eyes on the prize

By global standards, the glittering prize of practising law in New York is fairly accessible to anybody with the brains (and a green card). If you come from another American state, or from another country that practises English-style common law (in which precedents set by judges are all-important), it is a matter of mugging up and passing the New York bar exam. If you come from a country that practises civil law (where a written legal code holds sway), then you must first spend a year getting a Master of Laws at an American university.

As this arrangement implies, there are big similarities between the precedent-based systems of law that prevail in the Anglophone world, and a wide difference between them and the civil-law tradition of continental Europe. So it might be expected that lawyers could slide easily from one English-speaking or Commonwealth country to another, while finding it harder to leave the Anglo-sphere. It is true that most global law firms are British- or American-based. But Commonwealth countries have not always offered an open environment; among the things they learned from British mentors-along with ideals like the presumption of innocence-was how to protect the profession from pesky competitors. And some non-Commonwealth countries are now surprisingly open.

In China and Brazil foreign firms have flourished by offering advice on international law, but they cannot provide legal representation in local courts. (An exception is Hong Kong, which has recently seen a spurt in foreign lawyers taking the local bar exam.) If a Chinese lawyer takes a job with a foreign law office in Beijing, he or she will temporarily forfeit the right to practise Chinese law. But a Russian lawyer who wants to work for a foreign employer faces no such disincentive.

South Korea has promised to open up its legal market to outsiders under a Free Trade Agreement with the European Union that should be ratified later this year. And in 2008 Singapore became more foreign-friendly; certain firms from other countries can practise domestic law in some areas, as long as the lawyers they use have local qualifications. Japan opened up its legal-services market in 1999, despite great nervousness from its own lawyers. Since 2005, foreign firms have been able to set up partnerships employing Japanese lawyers, who (in contrast with Singapore) need not give up their national licence.

But there is one determined outlier among fast-growing Asian economies: India, the only big country that is closed to foreign lawyers in any capacity. A powerful lobby-ranging from hundreds of thousands of small (often husband-and-wife) practices to a handful of leading partnerships-resists change. Foreigners who tried venturing into the Indian market are still reeling from a decision in December by the Bombay High Court which deemed illegal the "liaison offices" that some outsiders had opened. The Indian government said (rather half-heartedly) that it would appeal against this ruling. But the climate in which law-related work could be undertaken by outsiders has gone from difficult to prohibitive. Reena Sengupta, a London-based consultant, says she used to see foreign-owned legal-research operations in India where beds, not desks, greeted the visitor; such was the keenness to dispel the impression that law was being practised. Now those offices have simply closed.

Indians who need world-class legal advice lose out, says Stuart Popham, a senior partner in Clifford Chance, a London firm, who this week accompanied David Cameron, the British prime minister, on a tour of India. The effect is "to restrict supply and competition and raise prices…you have to fly clients out to meet lawyers elsewhere." A lot of Indian-related work is done in the more liberal climate of Singapore. Mr Popham says he is frustrated by some Indians' contention that firms like his own will inevitably take away local jobs. "Liberalisation does not take away anyone's job…the evidence is that no country has ended up with a smaller domestic legal community after opening up."

For the Law Society of England and Wales, getting the Indians to free up their market is high on the wish-list. "We want to invest in India's potential to become a global legal player…this means new work coming to India," insists Alison Hook, the society's head of international activities.

But much of her target audience is, as yet, unpersuaded. "The Indian profession will rise up in arms if [foreigners] want to open offices here," says Lalit Bhasin, head of the Society of Indian Law Firms. He accuses the British government and profession of "trying to emasculate the Indian legal community" by pressing a "one-point agenda" of liberalisation. In practice, India's legal world is unlikely to let outsiders participate unless restrictions on the country's own lawyers are eased. Indian firms may not advertise their services, and only the simplest websites are permitted; until recently the number of partners was capped at 20. Cyril Shroff, managing partner at Amarchand Mangaldas, India's biggest law firm, says a more liberal regime, both internally and externally, is inevitable-but he would oppose opening the field to foreigners unless life was also made easier for locals. "The real question is how we can modernise the Indian legal market." Ms Hook says her society agrees with the idea of India undertaking "holistic" reform, domestic as well as external.


Wading through maple syrup

Another big Commonwealth country, Canada, is less restrictive than India-but not as open as England or Australia either. It is fairly rare for lawyers to move between Canadian provinces, and a switch from Quebec to an English-speaking province involves a change of legal tradition as well as language. Meanwhile, foreign lawyers who want to practise Canadian law face two evaluations-one at federal level, the other provincial-and most fail. Between 1999 and 2009, the Federation of Law Societies received 4,515 applications from foreign advocates and issued only 1,708 certificates. Of the 1,027 English lawyers assessed, only 375 got the desired bit of paper. Paul Paton, a Canadian-born law professor, believes that governments, not lawyers, deserve the credit for opening up the profession in England and Australia-and he hopes for a similar change in Canada. English and Australian lawyers were forced to abandon the idea of self-regulation when "the public saw something wasn't right and the government had to step in," says Mr Paton, who now works at California's University of the Pacific.

Indian lawyers, still determined to mind their own business
Canadian lawyers could benefit from a more liberal legal-services regime, he believes. Already, some Canadians find ways around the obstacles which they, like everybody, face in India. Stikeman Elliott, a Canadian firm with about 500 lawyers worldwide, trawls for contacts among the Indian diaspora in Toronto and Vancouver, and it stands ready to assist Indian investors with an eye on Canada's resources. But it avoids giving even a whisper of advice on Indian soil.

While some countries still hesitate to enter the global contest for legal services and talent, the competition itself is changing, says John Conroy, chairman of Baker & McKenzie, an American firm which went global before anybody else. It was no longer a question of vying to help Western investors with their activities in emerging economies; the real prize in those markets was "outbound" work-for example, advising on investment by Chinese concerns in Africa and Latin America, or on rights issues for Chinese banks. (His firm's China-based partners have recently done both.) The other change was that firms based in Asia were bidding for Anglo-Saxon talent. Chinese firms were hiring lawyers from English-speaking countries, while Japanese law firms-so risk-averse only a decade ago-were consolidating and girding themselves for international work. As Mr Conroy notes, it takes time for an institution based in the Anglophone world to be acculturated in Asia or Latin America; winning local trust is as crucial as passing exams or gaining licences. And even in countries where trust has been established, the climate can change, as Baker & McKenzie is finding in the anti-American atmosphere that now rages in Venezuela, where it has worked since the 1950s. The situation there is "really testing our mettle, and I call our Caracas partners heroes," Mr Conroy says. Whether administrative or just cultural, barriers can go up as well as down.

Click to expand...

MkenyaMzalendo said:

Eish, mbavu sina..

Nyie WaTz hunichekesha sana kwa vile mko sensitive.

Ningetaka kumwalika msjisomee makala haya ndio mu-understand ni kwa nini ninakashifu restrictions za services (which BTW should be illegal under the WTO rules, kikundi kinacho-regulate trade in goods and services ambacho Tz ni member). Haja yangu sio kuwakasirisha ama kuwadharau kwa hivyo wenye wameona kama nimewatukana nawaomba msamaha.

LAW is supposed to be about universal principles: rules that apply without prejudice to a broad category of human beings, regardless of sex, culture or economic status. So in a world where barriers to the transfer of goods, expertise and people are coming down, you might expect that the legal profession would be among the first to fuse into a seamless transnational fraternity. In history, whenever cross-border commerce has flourished, as in medieval Venice, so too have trade lawyers with broad horizons, like the ones pictured above. And today, at least from the vantage-point of the ambitious practitioner, the legal profession seems to have little respect for borders.

A talented graduate from any of the world’s top law schools can expect a life of globe-trotting. A single month’s work can include writing the small print on a Saudi investment in Africa, helping an Indonesian firm to market its shares in New York, and writing a contract under English law between two companies in Russia. Humanitarian law, as well as the commercial sort, is going global: these days nobody would be surprised to see an American lobby group test the principle of “universal jurisdiction” (for egregious crimes) by trying to get an African dictator arrested on a shopping trip to Europe.

But that is not the whole story. On one hand, international lawyers are at least as ingenious as their customers when it comes to overcoming obstacles to transnational operations; on the other, lawyers have always been skilful at limiting access to their own profession, both within their own countries and globally. And when there are big barriers to professional mobility inside a country, it is less likely to open up to foreign competition.


Eyes on the prize

By global standards, the glittering prize of practising law in New York is fairly accessible to anybody with the brains (and a green card). If you come from another American state, or from another country that practises English-style common law (in which precedents set by judges are all-important), it is a matter of mugging up and passing the New York bar exam. If you come from a country that practises civil law (where a written legal code holds sway), then you must first spend a year getting a Master of Laws at an American university.

As this arrangement implies, there are big similarities between the precedent-based systems of law that prevail in the Anglophone world, and a wide difference between them and the civil-law tradition of continental Europe. So it might be expected that lawyers could slide easily from one English-speaking or Commonwealth country to another, while finding it harder to leave the Anglo-sphere. It is true that most global law firms are British- or American-based. But Commonwealth countries have not always offered an open environment; among the things they learned from British mentors—along with ideals like the presumption of innocence—was how to protect the profession from pesky competitors. And some non-Commonwealth countries are now surprisingly open.

In China and Brazil foreign firms have flourished by offering advice on international law, but they cannot provide legal representation in local courts. (An exception is Hong Kong, which has recently seen a spurt in foreign lawyers taking the local bar exam.) If a Chinese lawyer takes a job with a foreign law office in Beijing, he or she will temporarily forfeit the right to practise Chinese law. But a Russian lawyer who wants to work for a foreign employer faces no such disincentive.

South Korea has promised to open up its legal market to outsiders under a Free Trade Agreement with the European Union that should be ratified later this year. And in 2008 Singapore became more foreign-friendly; certain firms from other countries can practise domestic law in some areas, as long as the lawyers they use have local qualifications. Japan opened up its legal-services market in 1999, despite great nervousness from its own lawyers. Since 2005, foreign firms have been able to set up partnerships employing Japanese lawyers, who (in contrast with Singapore) need not give up their national licence.

But there is one determined outlier among fast-growing Asian economies: India, the only big country that is closed to foreign lawyers in any capacity. A powerful lobby—ranging from hundreds of thousands of small (often husband-and-wife) practices to a handful of leading partnerships—resists change. Foreigners who tried venturing into the Indian market are still reeling from a decision in December by the Bombay High Court which deemed illegal the “liaison offices” that some outsiders had opened. The Indian government said (rather half-heartedly) that it would appeal against this ruling. But the climate in which law-related work could be undertaken by outsiders has gone from difficult to prohibitive. Reena Sengupta, a London-based consultant, says she used to see foreign-owned legal-research operations in India where beds, not desks, greeted the visitor; such was the keenness to dispel the impression that law was being practised. Now those offices have simply closed.

Indians who need world-class legal advice lose out, says Stuart Popham, a senior partner in Clifford Chance, a London firm, who this week accompanied David Cameron, the British prime minister, on a tour of India. The effect is “to restrict supply and competition and raise prices…you have to fly clients out to meet lawyers elsewhere.” A lot of Indian-related work is done in the more liberal climate of Singapore. Mr Popham says he is frustrated by some Indians’ contention that firms like his own will inevitably take away local jobs. “Liberalisation does not take away anyone’s job…the evidence is that no country has ended up with a smaller domestic legal community after opening up.”

For the Law Society of England and Wales, getting the Indians to free up their market is high on the wish-list. “We want to invest in India’s potential to become a global legal player…this means new work coming to India,” insists Alison Hook, the society’s head of international activities.

But much of her target audience is, as yet, unpersuaded. “The Indian profession will rise up in arms if [foreigners] want to open offices here,” says Lalit Bhasin, head of the Society of Indian Law Firms. He accuses the British government and profession of “trying to emasculate the Indian legal community” by pressing a “one-point agenda” of liberalisation. In practice, India’s legal world is unlikely to let outsiders participate unless restrictions on the country’s own lawyers are eased. Indian firms may not advertise their services, and only the simplest websites are permitted; until recently the number of partners was capped at 20. Cyril Shroff, managing partner at Amarchand Mangaldas, India’s biggest law firm, says a more liberal regime, both internally and externally, is inevitable—but he would oppose opening the field to foreigners unless life was also made easier for locals. “The real question is how we can modernise the Indian legal market.” Ms Hook says her society agrees with the idea of India undertaking “holistic” reform, domestic as well as external.


Wading through maple syrup

Another big Commonwealth country, Canada, is less restrictive than India—but not as open as England or Australia either. It is fairly rare for lawyers to move between Canadian provinces, and a switch from Quebec to an English-speaking province involves a change of legal tradition as well as language. Meanwhile, foreign lawyers who want to practise Canadian law face two evaluations—one at federal level, the other provincial—and most fail. Between 1999 and 2009, the Federation of Law Societies received 4,515 applications from foreign advocates and issued only 1,708 certificates. Of the 1,027 English lawyers assessed, only 375 got the desired bit of paper. Paul Paton, a Canadian-born law professor, believes that governments, not lawyers, deserve the credit for opening up the profession in England and Australia—and he hopes for a similar change in Canada. English and Australian lawyers were forced to abandon the idea of self-regulation when “the public saw something wasn’t right and the government had to step in,” says Mr Paton, who now works at California’s University of the Pacific.

Indian lawyers, still determined to mind their own business
Canadian lawyers could benefit from a more liberal legal-services regime, he believes. Already, some Canadians find ways around the obstacles which they, like everybody, face in India. Stikeman Elliott, a Canadian firm with about 500 lawyers worldwide, trawls for contacts among the Indian diaspora in Toronto and Vancouver, and it stands ready to assist Indian investors with an eye on Canada’s resources. But it avoids giving even a whisper of advice on Indian soil.

While some countries still hesitate to enter the global contest for legal services and talent, the competition itself is changing, says John Conroy, chairman of Baker & McKenzie, an American firm which went global before anybody else. It was no longer a question of vying to help Western investors with their activities in emerging economies; the real prize in those markets was “outbound” work—for example, advising on investment by Chinese concerns in Africa and Latin America, or on rights issues for Chinese banks. (His firm’s China-based partners have recently done both.) The other change was that firms based in Asia were bidding for Anglo-Saxon talent. Chinese firms were hiring lawyers from English-speaking countries, while Japanese law firms—so risk-averse only a decade ago—were consolidating and girding themselves for international work. As Mr Conroy notes, it takes time for an institution based in the Anglophone world to be acculturated in Asia or Latin America; winning local trust is as crucial as passing exams or gaining licences. And even in countries where trust has been established, the climate can change, as Baker & McKenzie is finding in the anti-American atmosphere that now rages in Venezuela, where it has worked since the 1950s. The situation there is “really testing our mettle, and I call our Caracas partners heroes,” Mr Conroy says. Whether administrative or just cultural, barriers can go up as well as down.

Click to expand...

mayenga said:

U are a miserable Advocate of its own kind.Kwanini? Haiwezekani ukaendesha biashara basing on others opinion.Haimaanishi kwakuwa America wanafanya hivyo nasi lazima tufanye vivyohivyo.Kufunguliwa kwa soko la Afrika Mashariki hakufanyi nyinyi mje kwa kuvamia bila kufuata sheria.Lazima kuwepo harmonization ya sheria kabla ninyi hamjaanza kuonyesha umachinga wenu hapa Tanzania.A good lawyeris the one who knows to find the proper law which allows him/her to perform a certain task,siyo kukurupuka tu.

Click to expand...

MkenyaMzalendo said:

Eish, mbavu sina..

Nyie WaTz hunichekesha sana kwa vile mko sensitive.

Ningetaka kumwalika msjisomee makala haya ndio mu-understand ni kwa nini ninakashifu restrictions za services (which BTW should be illegal under the WTO rules, kikundi kinacho-regulate trade in goods and services ambacho Tz ni member). Haja yangu sio kuwakasirisha ama kuwadharau kwa hivyo wenye wameona kama nimewatukana nawaomba msamaha.

LAW is supposed to be about universal principles: rules that apply without prejudice to a broad category of human beings, regardless of sex, culture or economic status. So in a world where barriers to the transfer of goods, expertise and people are coming down, you might expect that the legal profession would be among the first to fuse into a seamless transnational fraternity. In history, whenever cross-border commerce has flourished, as in medieval Venice, so too have trade lawyers with broad horizons, like the ones pictured above. And today, at least from the vantage-point of the ambitious practitioner, the legal profession seems to have little respect for borders.

A talented graduate from any of the world's top law schools can expect a life of globe-trotting. A single month's work can include writing the small print on a Saudi investment in Africa, helping an Indonesian firm to market its shares in New York, and writing a contract under English law between two companies in Russia. Humanitarian law, as well as the commercial sort, is going global: these days nobody would be surprised to see an American lobby group test the principle of "universal jurisdiction" (for egregious crimes) by trying to get an African dictator arrested on a shopping trip to Europe.

But that is not the whole story. On one hand, international lawyers are at least as ingenious as their customers when it comes to overcoming obstacles to transnational operations; on the other, lawyers have always been skilful at limiting access to their own profession, both within their own countries and globally. And when there are big barriers to professional mobility inside a country, it is less likely to open up to foreign competition.


Eyes on the prize

By global standards, the glittering prize of practising law in New York is fairly accessible to anybody with the brains (and a green card). If you come from another American state, or from another country that practises English-style common law (in which precedents set by judges are all-important), it is a matter of mugging up and passing the New York bar exam. If you come from a country that practises civil law (where a written legal code holds sway), then you must first spend a year getting a Master of Laws at an American university.

As this arrangement implies, there are big similarities between the precedent-based systems of law that prevail in the Anglophone world, and a wide difference between them and the civil-law tradition of continental Europe. So it might be expected that lawyers could slide easily from one English-speaking or Commonwealth country to another, while finding it harder to leave the Anglo-sphere. It is true that most global law firms are British- or American-based. But Commonwealth countries have not always offered an open environment; among the things they learned from British mentors-along with ideals like the presumption of innocence-was how to protect the profession from pesky competitors. And some non-Commonwealth countries are now surprisingly open.

In China and Brazil foreign firms have flourished by offering advice on international law, but they cannot provide legal representation in local courts. (An exception is Hong Kong, which has recently seen a spurt in foreign lawyers taking the local bar exam.) If a Chinese lawyer takes a job with a foreign law office in Beijing, he or she will temporarily forfeit the right to practise Chinese law. But a Russian lawyer who wants to work for a foreign employer faces no such disincentive.

South Korea has promised to open up its legal market to outsiders under a Free Trade Agreement with the European Union that should be ratified later this year. And in 2008 Singapore became more foreign-friendly; certain firms from other countries can practise domestic law in some areas, as long as the lawyers they use have local qualifications. Japan opened up its legal-services market in 1999, despite great nervousness from its own lawyers. Since 2005, foreign firms have been able to set up partnerships employing Japanese lawyers, who (in contrast with Singapore) need not give up their national licence.

But there is one determined outlier among fast-growing Asian economies: India, the only big country that is closed to foreign lawyers in any capacity. A powerful lobby-ranging from hundreds of thousands of small (often husband-and-wife) practices to a handful of leading partnerships-resists change. Foreigners who tried venturing into the Indian market are still reeling from a decision in December by the Bombay High Court which deemed illegal the "liaison offices" that some outsiders had opened. The Indian government said (rather half-heartedly) that it would appeal against this ruling. But the climate in which law-related work could be undertaken by outsiders has gone from difficult to prohibitive. Reena Sengupta, a London-based consultant, says she used to see foreign-owned legal-research operations in India where beds, not desks, greeted the visitor; such was the keenness to dispel the impression that law was being practised. Now those offices have simply closed.

Indians who need world-class legal advice lose out, says Stuart Popham, a senior partner in Clifford Chance, a London firm, who this week accompanied David Cameron, the British prime minister, on a tour of India. The effect is "to restrict supply and competition and raise prices…you have to fly clients out to meet lawyers elsewhere." A lot of Indian-related work is done in the more liberal climate of Singapore. Mr Popham says he is frustrated by some Indians' contention that firms like his own will inevitably take away local jobs. "Liberalisation does not take away anyone's job…the evidence is that no country has ended up with a smaller domestic legal community after opening up."

For the Law Society of England and Wales, getting the Indians to free up their market is high on the wish-list. "We want to invest in India's potential to become a global legal player…this means new work coming to India," insists Alison Hook, the society's head of international activities.

But much of her target audience is, as yet, unpersuaded. "The Indian profession will rise up in arms if [foreigners] want to open offices here," says Lalit Bhasin, head of the Society of Indian Law Firms. He accuses the British government and profession of "trying to emasculate the Indian legal community" by pressing a "one-point agenda" of liberalisation. In practice, India's legal world is unlikely to let outsiders participate unless restrictions on the country's own lawyers are eased. Indian firms may not advertise their services, and only the simplest websites are permitted; until recently the number of partners was capped at 20. Cyril Shroff, managing partner at Amarchand Mangaldas, India's biggest law firm, says a more liberal regime, both internally and externally, is inevitable-but he would oppose opening the field to foreigners unless life was also made easier for locals. "The real question is how we can modernise the Indian legal market." Ms Hook says her society agrees with the idea of India undertaking "holistic" reform, domestic as well as external.


Wading through maple syrup

Another big Commonwealth country, Canada, is less restrictive than India-but not as open as England or Australia either. It is fairly rare for lawyers to move between Canadian provinces, and a switch from Quebec to an English-speaking province involves a change of legal tradition as well as language. Meanwhile, foreign lawyers who want to practise Canadian law face two evaluations-one at federal level, the other provincial-and most fail. Between 1999 and 2009, the Federation of Law Societies received 4,515 applications from foreign advocates and issued only 1,708 certificates. Of the 1,027 English lawyers assessed, only 375 got the desired bit of paper. Paul Paton, a Canadian-born law professor, believes that governments, not lawyers, deserve the credit for opening up the profession in England and Australia-and he hopes for a similar change in Canada. English and Australian lawyers were forced to abandon the idea of self-regulation when "the public saw something wasn't right and the government had to step in," says Mr Paton, who now works at California's University of the Pacific.

Indian lawyers, still determined to mind their own business
Canadian lawyers could benefit from a more liberal legal-services regime, he believes. Already, some Canadians find ways around the obstacles which they, like everybody, face in India. Stikeman Elliott, a Canadian firm with about 500 lawyers worldwide, trawls for contacts among the Indian diaspora in Toronto and Vancouver, and it stands ready to assist Indian investors with an eye on Canada's resources. But it avoids giving even a whisper of advice on Indian soil.

While some countries still hesitate to enter the global contest for legal services and talent, the competition itself is changing, says John Conroy, chairman of Baker & McKenzie, an American firm which went global before anybody else. It was no longer a question of vying to help Western investors with their activities in emerging economies; the real prize in those markets was "outbound" work-for example, advising on investment by Chinese concerns in Africa and Latin America, or on rights issues for Chinese banks. (His firm's China-based partners have recently done both.) The other change was that firms based in Asia were bidding for Anglo-Saxon talent. Chinese firms were hiring lawyers from English-speaking countries, while Japanese law firms-so risk-averse only a decade ago-were consolidating and girding themselves for international work. As Mr Conroy notes, it takes time for an institution based in the Anglophone world to be acculturated in Asia or Latin America; winning local trust is as crucial as passing exams or gaining licences. And even in countries where trust has been established, the climate can change, as Baker & McKenzie is finding in the anti-American atmosphere that now rages in Venezuela, where it has worked since the 1950s. The situation there is "really testing our mettle, and I call our Caracas partners heroes," Mr Conroy says. Whether administrative or just cultural, barriers can go up as well as down.

Click to expand...