Efforts to liberalise emerging economy legal markets through the World Trade Organisation (WTO) look to have ground to a halt after years of procrastination. Last month’s Doha trade talks in Geneva came to a premature conclusion before delegates even got round to discussing deregulation of the legal sector.
Opening up foreign legal markets was set to be discussed as part of the General Agreement on Trade in Services and, although expectations of achieving a multilateral trade agreement were already low, both the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) and the Law Society have described the breakdown as “disappointing”.
