I have just returned from the annual conference of the International Bar Association (IBA) in Madrid – the largest ever, with more than 5,000 lawyers from around the world. It wasn’t the best-designed conference to attend – most of the hotels were in the city centre and the congress centre was out at the airport, with roadworks and heavy traffic conspiring to keep delegates from travelling between the two. There were more than a few clutching conference bags on the metro.

I participated in a meeting on the draft commentary on the IBA’s general principles, and also in a session on in-house counsel, among others. These two meetings led me to reflect on whether it would ever be possible to draw up a global code of conduct for lawyers. The topic is in the air as a consequence of globalisation. The IBA’s principles attempt to be universal. Interestingly, the other international organisation for lawyers, the Union Internationale des Avocats, is holding a conference next year on precisely this – drawing up a global code. The Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe has been working on converging the differences in Europe, and indeed if ever there is a global code of conduct, I think it will be based on our model and experiences in Europe.

So what are the issues that keep us apart? At root, they emanate from starkly different visions of what a lawyer is and what a lawyer should do. Before these differences are settled, it will be difficult to make progress on a global code (never mind that acceptance of such a code would involve the bars ceding sovereignty over one of their treasures – their codes of conduct). One of the differences in vision arises out of this: to whom does the client owe ultimate loyalty, to the court or the client? In our system, the solicitor is an officer of the court, and so the ultimate loyalty is clear. But ‘officer of the court’ is not a label known in many systems, where the client is owed the ultimate loyalty. Out of differences like this, the following deep divisions arise and remain:

(1) The duty of a lawyer not to mislead the court is deeply engrained in our system and is reflected in rules like the duty to correct a mistake before the court or bring up cases that might be damaging to one’s client. But in some systems the lawyer’s duty to the client is stronger than the duty to the court, and so the lawyer may – some argue must – mislead the court if instructed to do so by the client.

(2) The confidence – or professional secret, as it is commonly known in Europe – of the client belongs to the client under our system, and so can be waived by the client. Under other systems, though, the professional secret belongs to the lawyer, and the lawyer is unable to waive it even if the client requests it.

(3) The independence of a lawyer is incompatible under many systems with an employment contract, which means not only that lawyers cannot be employed by non-lawyers (the classic case of an in-house counsel), but cannot even be employed by other lawyers. In the latter instance, associates in a law firm will be on a freelance contract, and not employed.

The European Commission threatened, in an early draft of the services directive of a few years ago, to draw up a common code for Europe if the bars did not develop one themselves. The Council of Europe, for quite different reasons, and with the goal of wanting to help emerging bars in new democracies in eastern Europe, has also spoken of drawing up a common code of conduct for European lawyers, as a template for others.

How will the differences eventually be settled, if at all? If you find any of the three rules I have discussed above to be something on which you would not budge, be assured that lawyers from those other systems feel just as strongly that their system is best. It will be a rocky road ahead.

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