I like to think that, if you examine a section of society, you can deduce problems and solutions which apply more widely. So, in this year of impending financial collapse and of governments which are paralysed or uncertain, I shall look at current developments relating to lawyers across Europe, and see what is happening and what should be done. You will see that there are patterns of activity.

In the Netherlands, the government has published a draft law under which lawyers will be supervised by a board of three non-lawyers, who will have special guidance powers over local bar presidents, such as the power to initiate dismissal or suspension proceedings against them. The role of local presidents in disciplinary proceedings will diminish, since complaints of an ethical nature will be lodged directly with a disciplinary council. The board will also be able to vest supervisory powers in people other than the local bar president.

These other supervisors may query the files of a lawyer, regardless of professional secrecy. It will also be possible to set aside professional secrecy in the interests of supervision. The government will appoint the members of the board and approve the board’s budget, but the Dutch bar will have to provide the board’s funding. The bar’s only other role is to recommend candidates for the board.

In Ireland, as a result of the bail-out and the influence of the troika (International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and EU), the minister of justice is about to publish a proposal for an independent regulator of the legal profession. It is likely that it will have some similarities with the current UK law or the Dutch proposals above on legal professional regulation.

In Norway, there is great pressure on the bar to reduce the level of professional secrecy to allow government investigators more information on tax evasion, for instance when money is channelled to tax havens. (You will note – and this is important for my argument below – that this is being suggested only for economic crimes.)

At EU level, the activity has switched from DG Competition, which used to be very active regarding the legal profession, to DG Internal Market, which is responsible for implementing the single market. This directorate is now conducting three different reviews of rules which might apply to the legal profession, all of them with radical intent: the evaluation of the existing lawyers’ directives on free movement, with questions as to whether they should be scrapped altogether and how alternative business structures might be accommodated within them; a review of reserved activities; and a case study of a multi-disciplinary company with non-lawyer investment.

There is a consistent narrative in these developments, which is obviously reflected also in forthcoming changes in England and Wales and in Scotland. The narrative can be traced to the following phrases: the removal of influence of lawyers over their own regulation; suspicion as to whether existing structures are delivering legal services in the way that governments want; and behind it all – even if nowhere articulated – the continuing feeling that free markets are the only criterion of success.

I shall try to read something wider into these developments. Why is it that the core values of the profession, and professional structures themselves, were more or less respected and left untouched by governments for decades in democratic countries, but are now under attack? There are many strands at work, but at base there is what I have called the unarticulated and general feeling that free markets are the only criterion of success.

Economic values drive out all other values, slowly but surely. Professional secrecy – does it benefit the country financially: yes or no? Input of professionals into their own regulation – is there the possibility that the professionals will seek to benefit economically from their own regulation: yes or no? These after a time become the only questions which need to be asked, and other issues which have no economic value, such as the protection of citizens when seeking a lawyer’s help, or the long years of experience of practitioners when using a particular system, are swept aside.

Lawyers have an armoury of arguments against the changes I have mentioned. The core values of the profession – often boiled down to three principles: independence, confidentiality and absence of conflicts of interest – are enshrined in court decisions at national and European level and in European and international instruments which governments have themselves agreed to implement. The question is not whether we have arguments or whether the arguments are right – ‘yes’ to both of these – but whether they are being heard, and, if not, whether they need to be reformulated for a new age. I had thought that with the onset of the economic crisis, different values might emerge, but it seems that governments still know only one tune.

This is strange, since markets have recently failed spectacularly to deliver stability or prosperity.

My point is this. We need to analyse the wider setting in which lawyers are seen – at present, mainly as economic actors within a setting which is judged on economics alone – and develop arguments which deal with this context.

Argument number one, it seems to me, is to say that, given the dire straits to which we have been driven as a result of free market economics, it is incumbent on our leaders to develop a new value system in which the non-economic interests of citizens are given a guaranteed and unassailable weight. Lawyers are among the central group which protects non-economic interests – liberty, confidentiality, a whole host of rights that have no economic meaning – and we should take a lead in pushing for a new settlement of values to include the non-economic.

Jonathan Goldsmith is secretary general of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, which represents about one million European lawyers through its member bars and law societies. He blogs weekly for the Gazette on European affairs