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Preparing lawyers for global leadership

As globalization breaks down the barriers of international businesses, economies, and cultures, the IU Maurer School of Law has launched a new center that will enhance the understanding of legal systems around the globe. With attorneys becoming more integrated in cases that span the world, the Center on the Global Legal Profession is forging relationships that defy borders and become a home base for the development of the international skills needed by the lawyers of tomorrow.

Professor William Henderson, the center’s director, envisions the center assisting current attorneys with navigating the complexities of international legal issues, and giving students a definitive advantage over their peers. Picture a large law firm that represents a company with branches scattered throughout the United States, China, India, and Chile. While the firm’s American-based attorneys are well versed in how the legal process unfolds domestically, their knowledge in the international legal systems may lag behind. That knowledge gap results in inefficiencies that cost businesses time and money.

"When I go out and meet with the general counsel for a defense contractor or another international business, I ask them, ‘What do lawyers need to know to be able to do the work you do?’" Dean and Val Nolan Professor of Law Lauren Robel said. "The answer invariably always comes back to understanding the global supply chain. You get a big enough client or a big enough group, and they either already have an international office staffed with local lawyers or they bring in American lawyers who know how things work in that country."

Take China, for example. To a corporation with clients in Beijing, an attorney with the background knowledge of what Chinese lawyers do and how legal work is conducted there becomes a valuable commodity. With globalization transforming the way business is conducted, attorneys will need to know how to do business in every corner of the globe and the legal implications that arise. Enter the Center on the Global Legal Profession.

Professors Jay Krishnan, Ken Dau-Schmidt, Carole Silver, and Ethan Michelson are also lending their research and scholarship to the center. Krishnan brings expertise on the Indian legal profession; Michelson, a renowned sociologist, is the first to conduct rigorous empirical research on the Chinese legal profession; and Henderson and Dau-Schmidt have years of experience analyzing various aspects of the American legal profession. Silver's expertise centers on the international legal profession and the competencies required to succeed in that arena.

The center will use three existing components—the Law Firms Working Group, the FutureFirm competition, and the Milt Stewart Comparative Legal Professions program—to help achieve its mission. The Law Firms Working Group maintains the largest empirical database on the legal profession, FutureFirm challenges competitors to envision every aspect of building a successful law firm, and the Comparative Legal Professions program is helping define the parameters of what globalization means to the legal profession.

The three-tiered approach will create a cyclical model of legal education, merging extensive empirical data with a visionary approach to the future of the legal industry. The center’s researchers can take data from the Law Firms Working Group and analyze trends and patterns among successful law practices and firms around the world. FutureFirm competitors, free of the constraints imposed by real-world implications, can dedicate hours to building models of successful legal organizations. By evaluating current trends in the industry and combining them with the innovative roadmaps put forth by FutureFirm competitors, the center can develop educational tools for both legal professionals and students. That knowledge can be shared all over the world, helping establish what Henderson calls "the broader good."

"What we’re doing right now is planting the seeds that will sprout years from now," Henderson said. "This center will not only be about research, but about cementing relationships with faculty and students abroad. We want to establish connections between lawyers on different continents and work for the broader good, for the rule of law, for the creation of wealth. This isn’t just about research. It’s about research with a real-world impact. It’s about changing people’s behaviors and how they’ll participate in the legal profession 10, 20, and 50 years from now."

While Henderson and Dau-Schmidt continue their active roles in examining the American legal system, Michelson is in Beijing at the beginning of a yearlong ethnographic study of Chinese law firms. To the west, a burgeoning relationship with the Jindal Global Law School in India gives Indiana Law a pipeline into the Indian legal profession.

"The practice of law is much broader than thinking purely in terms of domestic legal work," Krishnan said. "India is the second-largest country in the world. While their attorneys are very knowledgeable on the American and British legal systems, we have unfortunately neglected to expand our commitment to learning theirs. You look at nations like China and India and you realize how much of a difference they will make on the global legal profession as their populations continue to grow at a fast rate."

Based on the IU Bloomington campus, the Center on the Global Legal Profession will be the first organization to look at the global legal industry as a whole from a big-picture perspective. Recognizing the trends from the profession over the last several decades and outlining models of where it is likely heading, the center will help mold the way the attorneys of the present and future practice their trade. The Center on the Global Legal Profession will truly make a world of difference.