Tashieka Mair, Staff Reporter

Thompson

Barbados Prime Minister David Thomspon is encouraging the region to prepare for the effects that globalisation will have on the legal services offered in the region.

Addressing yesterday's closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Lawyers' Association's (CLA) 25th conference at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in St James, Thompson said the region needed to adapt to the needs of a global clientele.

"It (globalisation) is inevitable in such a context that the supply of legal services, so indispensable to an effective accomplishment of these commercial objectives, will themselves be globalised," he said. "I speak both in terms of the services themselves and the lawyers or law firms which supply them."

Transnational

Thompson continued: "In effect, what was bonded by jurisdictional limits has become transnational in nature, much as the business of corporations - our clients."

The four main areas in which Thompson believes the region needs to prepare for globalisation's impact on the legal services are the changes in technology, the need to reform the regulatory process for the profession in light of these changes, the training and education of law practitioners to confront globalisation, and the legislative changes that may become necessary in order to facilitate the process.

"It hardly needs stating that the globalisation of legal services requires some skills and attitude not ordinarily found in the possession of the legal services provider bound by his or her jurisdiction," Thompson said. "The question of building the confidence of our legal service providers, to believe that they can compete and to market their skills, cannot be overstated."

Marketing training

He said this can be attained through not only the acquisition of specialised training but marketing training initiatives and confidence building mechanism by a professional bodies. He said persons were "too comfortable" working within their individual jurisdictions and needed to become aware of the reality of globalisation and the effect on the transaction of businesses in different cultures.

The CLA conference, which opened on Thursday, brought together hundreds of attorneys and legal officers throughout the Commonwealth. The next conference is scheduled for April 2012 in Hong Kong.