I am at the American Bar Association (ABA) annual meeting in Chicago. Numbers attending are seriously down, and the ABA faces the same kind of financial squeeze as bars all over the world.

I listened to a fascinating account of a report commissioned by the ABA’s Section of Legal Education on how it could be made easier for foreign law graduates or qualified lawyers to be admitted to an American bar. Thousands try each year. Many do it not to practise in the US but just to have the title on their CV. Easier qualification will lead not only to more foreign lawyers becoming US lawyers – it will doubtless also lead to forum shopping by budding lawyers. If it is quicker and cheaper to become a lawyer in a reputable jurisdiction, why not do it? It made me think about how these things are regulated in the EU.

The European single market is a classic example of a place where, if there is no harmonisation, people will go 'forum shopping', for lawyers’ titles as for anything else. We buy our meat from Italy, and our mobile phones from Finland. So why not qualify as a lawyer in another jurisdiction if it is quicker or cheaper?

The EU’s involvement so far as lawyers are concerned began with the Morgenbesser case (Case C-313/01). Christine Morgenbesser was a French national with a French law degree and some months of experience in a French law firm, but she was not qualified as a French lawyer. She went to Genoa, worked for a law firm there and applied to become an Italian lawyer. But the Genoa bar said that she had to have an Italian law degree. When she tried to have her French law degree recognised by the university in Genoa, it said that it would do so only subject to her completing a shortened course of two years, passing 13 examinations, and writing a final thesis. The European Court of Justice, though, when the matter came to them for decision, said that the Italians had to recognise her law degree, even though it was French. She did not have to take an Italian law degree as requested by the Genoa bar. All her qualifications and experience had to be taken into account. In other words, Morgenbesser brought about the free movement of law graduates throughout the EU. You can take your law degree in Latvia, and your bar exams in Greece.

Soon, an even more radical case is coming before the court, which involves a considerable shortening of the route to qualification. The case (C-118/09) concerns Robert Koller, an Austrian national, who took his law degree in Austria. Then he went to Spain and took some exams at the University of Madrid over a period of less than three years, which ended in his Austrian law degree being recognised as the equivalent to a Spanish law degree. Armed with that, he registered with the Madrid bar and became a Spanish ‘abogado’. Within a few weeks of being granted this title, he applied for admission to the Austrian bar under the European free-movement legislation and without having to take any further examinations. This would have cut between two and three years off the route to becoming an Austrian lawyer. The Austrians refused him because, among other things, he was circumventing their rule that you need to have 5 years’ practical experience in order to qualify as a lawyer in Austria. (As it happens, Spain will shortly implement further steps into becoming an ‘abogado’, and so forum shopping in Spain might be less attractive.)

There is no point in asking whether forum shopping is good or bad. As the discussion at the ABA Section of Legal Education showed, it is happening now. It arises out of natural human behaviour to seek personal advantage. The only solution is harmonisation of routes to qualification in every jurisdiction – or in the EU’s case, in every member state – which is out of the question. Each jurisdiction has its own cherished notions: more practical experience here, more academic study there.

Politicians have generally welcomed globalisation with open arms. Well, we have it now, and young people are not surprisingly making the best of it. If there is flight from or to particular bars’ titles, the bars concerned – and indeed all bars – will have to reflect on the reasons for it.

Jonathan Goldsmith is the Secretary General of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE), which represents over 700,000 European lawyers through its member bars and law societies.