Lawyers all over Germany are currently electing their delegates to the Satzungsversammlung, a kind of legislative assembly with wide powers to regulate how we go about our business.
In my district, Hamburg, I can cast my vote for as many as nine candidates (the number of delegates depends on the number of lawyers registered in each district). Looking at the slate of a dozen or so candidates, I notice that there is only a single person among them – just one - from a large international firm; everyone else on that list is either a solo practitioner or a member of a small local firm. (I suspect the situation is not much different in other large cities in Germany – and certainly not in the more rural areas.) These are the people who will, to some extent, shape the future of our profession in this country during the next four years.
