Legal services in the United States

Globalization of the legal profession is understandably affecting the regulatory structure governing access to the practice of law in the United States. The currents are running strongly in the direction of creating greater opportunities for lawyers to engage in trade in legal services and to practise their profession across both state and national borders. To understand the currents and cross-currents affecting legal practice in the United States, however, one must recognize certain factors. First, the practice of law is regulated by each of the fifty US states, the District of Columbia (Washington, DC) and US territories. Second, access to practise normally requires formal permission to practise on a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction basis. Third, there are formal structures regulating lawyers once they are admitted. The latter include registration requirements, continuing education requirements and disciplinary structures, to name a few. Some or all of these regulatory structures do not exist in the design of the legal profession in other nations. And, of course, institutions are slow to change as a general matter.