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DEAN KRAMER: Would you retain that same happiness if the New York City Bar would not welcome you over here?

PHILLIP SYCAMORE: With the New York Bar, I sense theres a sort of slight misunderstanding as to our method of qualification. It might just help if I can have a minute to explain how that differs from yours. A typical route to qualification in England to be a Solicitor would be at age 18 to go to the university and to do, let's say for the moment, a Law Degree. After that Law Degree, the student then attends another full time course, a postgraduate course, an intensive course, called a Legal Practice Course, and then embarks on a two year training contract. Only after that two years do they become a practicing Solicitor. We also -- this is where we differ from you, and this is where the New York Bar, I think, would have a difficulty -- attract nonlaw graduates. Our nonlaw graduates bring over a variety of other skills to the profession. They may be linguists, they may be scientists, all sorts of talents which benefit the global legal profession. They have to do another intensive legal course, very high in legal content, after their degree and before they do the Legal Practice Course. We just secured the results of a survey taken of students who come into the profession. It was interesting to see that our nonlaw graduates who have gone through the system are actually in great demand. A lot of the plum jobs, which are being offered by the firms in the city of London, are being offered to the nonlaw graduates because the firms are attracted by the broader base maturity and the additional skills which these graduate can bring. One of the difficulties we have in understanding the approach in New York, is that while New York could accept the graduate who has gone the traditional route with a law degree as being eligible to take the state bar exam, they will not accept very talented, nonlaw graduates. As a result the nonlaw graduate, having done the intermediary course, has to go back and do an American law degree. We think that, in terms of the work we need to do together, you are depriving, potentially depriving, yourself of some very talented people. I hope that debate is one on which we can progress in the short term.

DEAN KRAMER: Diane, how would California react to that?

DIANE YU: Your question makes me think of what that Algonquin wit, Robert Benchley, said upon arrival in Venice. He sent a telegram: "Streets flooded. Please advise." Well, we're one of the states that has a Foreign Legal Consultant plan. We have eleven people who qualify. It's probably not the huge success that many foreign countries would like by this time, but it is complicated. From the regulatory point of view (I'm the token regulator here), it is difficult to reconcile some of these exciting opportunities and challenges that were described by Deborah and Bob earlier, with the public protection issues that have been drilled into our heads to enforce. It is not simply professional competence. It is also knowledge of, and commitment to abide by the ethical and professional standards that are applicable in the jurisdiction; the continuing education requirement; a client security fund or other sort of protection for clients; an agreement to submit to certain discipline enforcement if some of the rules of professional conduct are infringed upon; and just generally being able to satisfy our Supreme Court that the graduates of a foreign law school should be able to practice here. The entry to the practice of law has been historically a judicial function. There are a number of hoops and steps - I'm not saying it's impossible to overcome them, but it would be helpful for regulators, when we hear from the marketeers about how important it is to be open about this, to find out how they intend to address those kinds of consumer protection issues. It is not quite enough to say, well, most of this business is being done for multinational corporations and because they're big and wealthy and powerful, they don't need any protection and you don't have to have any rules for them. We have always thought that being a lawyer included an obligation to abide by certain principles, duties and obligations. It would be helpful to hear a little bit more about how those things could be inculcated and incorporated in a new global scheme.

DEAN KRAMER: Deborah, are there simpler ways in which law schools and accreditation systems and state supreme courts can accomplish those consumer objectives?

PROFESSOR DEBORAH RHODE: Well, Diane's telegram story reminds me of another one in which the lawyer sends the message to the client, "justice prevailed" and the client sends back, "appeal at once." We're not in an area where sanity has really prevailed. We have instead a turf warfare in terms of the appropriate allocation of jurisdictional authority. If we were writing on a clean slate, I think that most of the people in this room could come up with a saner system than we now have -- one that is more responsive to the consumer protection goals that Diane mentioned. And at the risk of disclosing this in front of a California Bar regulator, I will note that although I'm licensed to practice in two states, my qualifications are neither necessary nor sufficient to equip me to do a lot of what people with far less training do in terms of routine legal work. Once you start asking what insures competence, what is the public interest here, you have to ask a different set of questions than the ones we traditionally have asked. You have to ask whether the current licensing structure is the least restrictive means of providing cost-effective legal services. And, if you reframe the question in that way, I think you might get a different answer than the kind of bifurcated jurisdictional structure that constantly exposes lawyers practicing in multistate, as well as multinational, transactions to the risk of technical violations of unauthorized practice rules. Nobody lives by them. Other professions are practicing law by necessity. American lawyers are practicing law in other jurisdictions by necessity as they perceive it. I think that it's time that we recognized reality and tried to make the rules slightly more consistent with what are, in fact, the practical pressures that lawyers are facing in an increasingly international and multi-jurisdictional world.