The flowering season for that most exotically located of plants, the international legal conference, has begun. It runs from May to October. It does not mean that there are no legal conferences outside those months, but the popular perennials – the International Bar Association (in Vancouver this year), the American Bar Association (in San Francisco), the Union Internationale des Avocats (in Istanbul) – all bloom in this half-year period. I am attending the International Bar Association’s 5th Annual Bar Leaders Conference in Copenhagen.

What is the purpose of international legal conferences? There are many downsides – the travel (think ash clouds and cabin crew strikes, not sunning yourself on a beach); the work that needs to be kept up back in the office (think constant emergencies); the forced conviviality (think breakfast with a remote acquaintance, or being caught in a corner of a cocktail party with no escape). But I have just returned from a worthwhile session.

It was on the topic of foreign law firms in emerging markets. This is of interest to English solicitors because of the huge export of UK legal services to nearly all parts of the world. The six panel members, of which I was one, had a pre-meeting at breakfast, and even we almost came to blows over whether liberalisation of markets is a good thing. I have found in the past that globalisation – liberalisation across borders – is one of the few topics likely to raise voices and blood pressure levels among the calmest and most dignified of lawyers. Liberalisers and conservatives become very angry with each other, not because they personally would be affected by anything likely to happen (they are usually each and every one of them well-off lawyers), but because it is an argument representing something else, namely one’s country’s place in the world.

The panel was chaired by Philip Jeyaretnam of Singapore. Philip is a former president of the Law Society of Singapore, but he has two greater claims to fame. First, he is one of Singapore’s leading novelists (you will find reference to him in guides to the island), and so he is among that admirable and small group of lawyers who are also artists. Second, his father was a prominent opposition politician in Singapore, which is a badge of singular honour. His father was the first opposition MP to take a seat in parliament, and his political enemies bankrupted him in subsequent years with lawsuits. Philip helped his father repay his debts so that he could re-enter the political arena.

We were lucky today that there was a representative from the Indian Bar present in the audience. You may remember that India is in a curious intellectual position in relation to its legal services. On the one hand, a recent court decision has said that no foreign lawyer can practise any form of law in India. Yet it has a booming outsourcing industry. I had a dream opportunity. In front of the gathered bar leaders from around the world, I was able to ask the Indian Bar representative how he reconciled the fact that American lawyers could not advise on American law in India, whereas Indian lawyers, not qualified in the US, were making millions from advising on American law in India. He hummed and hawed, said they were not making millions, denied that the Indian outsourcers were actually advising on American law but conceded that they might in the near future – and then fled the room to another, and doubtless more welcome, engagement.

We heard an interesting intervention from the floor from a representative of the German Bar. He said that German industry had become a world leader in exports and performance, but that German lawyers had not followed their industries as they went abroad. Instead, transactional law had been taken over by Anglo-Saxon firms, and German lawyers were internationally weak. He put this down to the effect of a monopoly law which said that only German lawyers could give advice on German law (which presumably restricted their world view to their own country).

I was absorbed. There are not many of them, but this was an instructive and enjoyable day at an international legal conference.

And, to return to the opening horticultural metaphor, my day was crowned with roses when I returned to my room and found that a European newspaper had leaked a story that one of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe chief lobbying aims over the last few years had finally been achieved. It appears that we are to have a dedicated directorate general of justice after all, a single department looking after justice matters. We were given the commissioner late last year, Viviane Reding, but now we are to have the separate department, too – in effect, an EU Ministry of Justice. Hurray!

Jonathan Goldsmith is the secretary general of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, which represents more than 700,000 European lawyers through its member bars and law societies