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25 Fordham Int'l L.J. 1039 (2001-2002)
Issue 5

handle is hein.journals/frdint25 and id is 1053 raw text is: ARTICLES THE CASE OF THE FOREIGN LAWYER: INTERNATIONALIZING THE U.S. LEGAL PROFESSION Carole Silver* INTRODUCTION The practice of law is increasingly international as law firms regularly expand across national boundaries, advising public and private clients on cross-border activities. There is more mixing between national legal systems than ever before, and whether through convergence or harmonization, legal rules and prac- tices that once were local or national are being challenged through contact with foreign systems. The agents of this interac- tion include lawyers and their law firms that compete, along with other professional services firms, for the role of representative quite apart from their nationality or that of their clients. Law firms, especially those based in the United States and England, increasingly abandon the exclusive connection to one national legal system, just as they have abandoned their local identities.1 One consequence of the increasing meeting of legal systems is that lawyers trained in different national systems interact with greater frequency. These interactions occur as a result of a vari- ety of circumstances, including the negotiations required of law- yers working on transnational matters as well as opportunities provided by working for law firms and other organizations anchored in one national system and expanding elsewhere. The interactions resulting from these cross-border meetings provide * Senior Lecturer, Northwestern University School of Law, and Co-Director, Cer- tificate Program in Law & Social Science of the American Bar Foundation and North- western University. Many thanks to Yves Dezalay, Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Bryant Garth, Guy Mundlak, John O'Hare, Susan Shapiro, and David Van Zandt for comments on earlier drafts; to Larry Biskowski, Laura Carroll, and Wen Wu for research assistance; and to the many lawyers-foreign and U.S.-who so generously shared their thoughts and experiences. An earlier version of this Article was presented at the Law & Society Association 2001 annual meeting in Budapest, Hungary. 1. See Carole Silver, Globalization and the U.S. Market in Legal Services-Shifting Identi- ties, 31 LAw & POL'Y INT'L Bus. 1093 (2000). 1039