Finding common legal ground within Europe

Published on Monday 7 May 2007 01:39

COMMON standards for the education and training of lawyers across the EU will be top of the agenda when delegates from Europe's bar associations meet in Edinburgh this week. For the first time in a generation, the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) will gather in Scotland for their plenary session. And this Friday and Saturday , 120 delegates - representing 700,000 lawyers - will discuss the CCBE's policy on issues affecting the profession across the EU.

With an increasing number of lawyers moving between jurisdictions in Europe, proposals to agree a set of minimum standards for the education and training of lawyers will be the key item for debate. The first draft of the CCBE's Recommendation on the Education and Training of Lawyers in Europe will be up for discussion. Its main aims are to provide a qualifications framework for legal education, to recognise any elements of training that are already common across the EU, and to address any unnecessary barriers to freedom of movement for lawyers.

CCBE's president, Colin Tyre QC, says he is keen to drive forward a set of basic standards so the public can continue to have confidence in lawyers regardless of in which member state they trained.

"It is a recommendation of what lawyers should be able to do, on the basis that lawyers qualified in one member state can practise all over Europe, and therefore it's appropriate that there is some form of minimum standard of achievement," he says. "It is offered as a model, effectively, both to people who consider themselves quite sophisticated and also to the countries that are positively looking for guidance as to what legal training should consist of."

Tyre acknowledges there are barriers for lawyers who wish to practise in another European jurisdiction. For example, it is notoriously easier for lawyers qualified in Scotland to make the transition to England than vice-versa, as the Law Society requires solicitors to be trained in Scots law. He hints that the CCBE would prefer greater flexibility for lawyers: "The idea is that anybody who can demonstrate the skills, knowledge and competencies which we describe should be able to practise across Europe."

Tyre will invite more detailed comments in writing after this week's event, with a view to the CCBE reaching a final agreement on the recommendation later this year.

The independence of the profession is another key theme for delegates at the plenary session. The CCBE is expected to approve a commentary to underpin its "Charter of core principles of the European legal profession", which was agreed in Brussels last year and asserts the importance of the independence of lawyers, 'the dignity and honour of the legal profession', respect for the rule of law, and self-regulation of the profession.

"In November we adopted our charter of core principles [and] since then our committee has been working on a commentary on these to flesh them out and explain what they all mean and how they apply in practice," says Tyre, an advocate specialising in tax law. "The core principles are terribly important, because they represent the first common ground we have achieved in Europe on domestic practice. The CCBE, for some years, has had a code of conduct which applies to cross-border provision of legal services.

"It is much, much harder to try to harmonise people's domestic codes of conduct, because nobody would agree to that. They want to keep their own ones and that's fair enough. What we have achieved here is to at least set out a set of core principles that everybody has agreed on, and that can be useful in various ways.

"It gives us a text where, when we are attacked by the competition authorities, we can point to this and say, 'These are the principles which must not be interfered with by competition law initiatives which attempt to break down practices or interfere with self-regulation particularly.'

"When it comes down to things like independence, confidentiality, conflicts of interest and so on, this is where we feel able to say to the authorities, 'No, you can't take away our right to regulate these because these are critical to access to justice and the rule of law.'"

Tyre, the third CCBE president to come from the UK and the second Scot, is also spearheading a move to co-operate with bar associations around the world to find areas of universal concern to lawyers - particularly where independence is under threat.

On Thursday, the CCBE will also meet with the world's leading bar associations - including the International Bar Association (IBA), the American Bar Association (ABA) and the Union Internationale des Avocats (UIA) - to discuss common ground.

"As far as I am aware, this is the first time there has been such a meeting," says Tyre. "The idea was to get the largest representative organisations in the world to discuss issues of common interest. I think we find more and more we find that we are all independently discussing the same things.

"Self-regulation is an obvious one. We produced our core principles last year and the IBA updated its core principles last year."

Delegates will also be updated on moves by the CCBE to address problems faced by law firms working in more than one EU jurisdiction. Tyre says many firms feel individual law societies or bar associations are not well-placed to help them resolve such issues.

"This will create a link between the CCBE and international law firms who tell us they have particular problems when they want to operate in a number of different jurisdictions not always assisted by law societies and bars. We have set up this committee just in the last few months to offer a horizontal input to our other committees."

The CCBE's plenary session has only been held once before in Edinburgh, when Sir David Edward was president between 1978 and 1980. Edward, who is a former judge at the European Court of Justice, will deliver a speech to delegates on Friday. "I expect [it] to be one of the highlights of the meeting," says Tyre. "He is highly respected."

Michael Napier QC, the Attorney General's pro bono envoy, will also give a talk about the importance of involvement in pro bono work - and delegates will be invited to make nominations for a new CCBE Human Rights Award for European Lawyers. The award is to recognise outstanding commitment to, and sacrifice in, upholding human rights, and the winner will be announced when the CCBE meets in Bruges in November.

• Further information: www.ccbe.org