I have just participated in a conference at Stanford University in California, called The Legal Profession in Times of Turbulence. It was attended by professors from leading American universities, with presentations of the highest quality. I have conclusions to draw of interest to us in Europe.First, I have noticed for some while, and this conference has confirmed, that US legal academics play a more central role in the development of legal professional policy than their counterparts in Europe. Here, the legal profession and its policy-makers on the one hand, and academia on the other, lead more separate lives. US academics participate in committees throughout the policy-making process in the American Bar Association. I know that, at the CCBE, we find that American academics study us and our policies to a greater degree than those working at our own European universities. An interesting question: does the regular inclusion of academics lead to better policy-making? (My answer, from my own experience in working on committees with academics, is definitely ‘yes’.)

Second, the word ‘international’ at the conference meant, almost exclusively, from an English-speaking country. So, there was a preponderance of US academics, which is not surprising given that it was taking place in the US. Then came the Australians, the British and a smattering from other English-speaking countries. There was one academic from Germany, one from the Netherlands, one from Japan – and maybe a couple of others that I missed. That is not international, and there is a consequence for thought and decision-making as a result. For instance, I speak below about outsourcing, but no one at the conference mentioned that outsourcing is an English-language phenomenon, and not relevant to lawyers conducting work in any other language.

Third, it was strange to have a conference discussing the legal profession and its practices with barely a practising lawyer there. I am aware that it was an academic conference, but the subjects under the microscope are hardly tiny insects living on the moon. It would have been good to have more practitioners present to tell us whether their experience confirmed the conclusions. Obviously, even in the US the two sectors lead rather separate lives.

Finally, the changes being discussed were almost exclusively those being undergone by 'big law'. I am perfectly aware that technology and globalisation affect the large law firms disproportionately, and that changes often start there and filter to the rest of the profession later. But you would hardly have known that most lawyers are down at the police station at midnight (is any outsourcing company or other third party threatening to take over that work?), or negotiating a local divorce. The working lives of lawyers in small firms need to be kept in mind; they form a majority of the profession.

The turbulence in the conference title referred to the changes we all know about which are affecting the role of lawyers. Maybe the most striking example occurred during a session on outsourcing. A representative (he was actually an English solicitor) of a large outsourcing firm with offices in Mumbai, New Delhi and Manila spoke of how the value of legal work is coming down. He said that there was no need for his firm to bid for high-value legal work. Indeed, it did not want to do so. It just had to wait at the bottom of the chain, as technology ensured that more and more legal work became a form of mechanical processing and so fell into its mouth at the bottom of the chain. Is that scary? For a full account of the outsourcing panel, read here (since another consequence of the conference taking place in these times is that various people have been blogging about it, including now me).

Developments in China and India were often mentioned. Their growing economic power is frightening the US (although walking through the impressive wealth and size of Stanford University campus made me wonder whether any other country could provide such facilities). There was also a discussion about whether we need to have a rule to resolve conflicts of ethical rules in cross-border practice (what the Americans call ‘choice of law’). A fresh draft of such a rule was prepared in advance by two speakers at the conference, and we were told that the New York Bar Association has also drafted a rule – both will be submitted to the American Bar’s Ethics 20/20 Commission. If Europe wants to have a say in this discussion, it will have to prepare its own arguments.

Congratulations to the organisers: this was a pudding of incredible richness. And I hope the few Europeans present will bring back lessons to improve our policy-making back home.

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