A truly international practice.

• Author: Perry, William J.

Three weeks ago my partners and I in London took on a new Assistant Solicitor (an Associate, n American terms). She has an Irish law degree and qualified as an English Solicitor last year. She is also an attorney in good standing at the bars of New York and California (and has been for some 7 years).

That sums up both the present and, ever-increasingly, the future of the legal profession. Our new recruit is female, was born and brought up in one country, is practising in a second and has a distinguished history of practice in two jurisdictions in a third. She is truly international as a lawyer.

That is just as well, for today law is international. The method used to reach a fair result varies over the world. Some countries have depositions, discovery of documents and cross-examination. Others have none of those things. Some have judges who are there simply to hold the ring and decide between adversarial parties; others have judges whose job it is to ferret out the truth for themselves. But legal systems are ever more interlinked. And all lawyers have one universal purpose: to fight fairly within the rules of their Court and their ethics, to benefit their clients, and so to help society do justice.

One example of that universality is the IADC's tenets of professionalism. Those tenets of professionalism are timeless and worldwide in application. They are a universal credo of the highest aspirations of any lawyer anywhere in the world.

Such universality is necessary at the cutting edge. For as the world increasingly, in the words of the cliche, becomes "a global village," lawyers---especially lawyers for corporations and insurers-are interacting not just across jurisdictions within countries, but across jurisdictions across the world.

In my speech on accepting the Presidency of IADC, 1 mentioned a case involving the purchase of a commodity from a company based in country A, by a company based in jurisdiction B who sold it on to one based in country C, who sold it on to companies based in countries D and E. Unfortunately, it is alleged that contracts were not properly performed and my firm is now acting in two arbitrations: one between the companies in A and B and the other between those in B and C. Both are subject, by the relevant contracts, to the law of jurisdiction F but to rules of arbitration of an organisation based in country G, with the seat of arbitration (and hence its procedural law) in country H (which happens to be England--hence...