Federalizing Legal Ethics, Nationalizing Law Practice, and the Future of the American Legal Profession in a Global Age

Complaints about the legal profession's self-regulation abound. Clients and critics argue, often persuasively, that the rules of professional conduct systematically favor lawyers' interests over clients' and societal interests, that the rules are chronically underenforced, and that enforcement, if and when it does take place, tends to be too lenient. Nowhere is lawyers' own critique of the rules more compelling than in the context of the nationalization and globalization of the practice of law. At one end, the profession can adhere to the status quo and continue to self-regulate at the state level. This approach may be warranted if -- the growing gap with practice realities notwithstanding -- there are compelling reasons to retain the current state-based regulatory apparatus. The nationalization of law practice is a significant contemporary development, and globalization of law practice is likely soon to follow. The natural and obvious regulatory solution to nationalization and globalization of law practice is the nationalization, and perhaps down the road the globalization, of the regulatory approach to law practice.