Legal Services in A Globalised World: A Critical Review in the Light of the General Agreement on Trade in Services

Abstract

ABSTRACT

This paper is an endeavour to understand the implications of liberalizing the legal sector pursuant to committing the same under the Schedule of the GATS as a consequence of the domestic regulations that are being imposed on the entry to foreign lawyers in India. The validity or rather the severity of the restriction was reiterated by judicial pronouncement in Lawyers' Collective. This paper would attempt to critically analyse the part domestic regulations, in the Advocates Act and Bar Council Rules, play in opposing liberalization by hampering the expansion and competence ofIndian lawyers in sustaining and rising over or competing with the foreign competition. In this context, certain suggestions are put across and the possible effects of novel developments are envisioned. Various countries have opened up their legal sector to the wide arms of liberalization and they have benefitted regardless of the apprehension that liberalization would result in the stomping over oflocal firms; India need to emulate or take points from the examples of Singapore and China. The primary constraint on the free movement of foreign lawyers is the domestic regulations prescribing citizenship and reciprocity for enrolment as a lawyer, which the Bar Council ought to remove and consider the introduction of partial licensing for foreign legal consultant to allow practice in limited areas of law such as international and home country law.