Internationalizing U.S. Legal Education: A Report on the Education of Transnational Lawyers

This article analyses the role of U.S. law schools in educating foreign lawyers and the increasingly competitive global market for graduate legal education. U.S. law schools have been at the forefront of this competition, but little has been reported about their graduate programs. This article presents original research on the programs and their students, drawn from interviews with directors of graduate programs at 35 U.S. law schools, information available on law school web sites about the programs, and interviews with graduates of U.S. graduate programs. Finally, the article considers the responses of U.S. law schools to new competition from foreign universities for the job of educating the world’s lawyers

Models of Quality for Third Parties in Alternative Dispute Resolution

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Internationalizing U.S. Legal Education: A Report on the Education of Transnational Lawyers

This article analyses the role of U.S. law schools in educating foreign lawyers and the increasingly competitive global market for graduate legal education. U.S. law schools have been at the forefront of this competition, but little has been reported about their graduate programs. This article presents original research on the programs and their students, drawn from interviews with directors of graduate programs at 35 U.S. law schools, information available on law school web sites about the programs, and interviews with graduates of U.S. graduate programs. Finally, the article considers the responses of U.S. law schools to new competition from foreign universities for the job of educating the world’s lawyers

Winners and Losers in the Globalization of Legal Services: Offshoring the Market for Foreign Lawyers

This article takes an empirical approach to the issue of how the U.S. legal services market is responding to globalization. It begins by considering the ways in which the domestic legal services market has internationalized by focusing on changes in legal education and examines the disconnection between U.S. legal education and practice opportunities in the U.S. The article proceeds to consider the ways in which U.S. law firms have become global organizations by offshoring their international identities, through the staffing of their non-U.S. offices with non-U.S. lawyers. Based on a database of more than 5,000 lawyers working in the offshore offices of 60 U.S.-based law firms, this article reveals this globalization strategy. Internationalization has been accomplished at local levels by most U.S. law firms. One consequence of this method of internationalization through offshoring is that the need for dual trained lawyers is minimal. While U.S. law schools attract increasing numbers of foreign lawyer students, U.S. law firms remain disinterested in hiring and training them. U.S. law firms have succeeded in going global by going local. As a result, the traditional power dynamics of most U.S. law firms, favoring domestic lawyers to the exclusion of those with foreign expertise and experience, has been preserved

The Variable Value of U.S. Legal Education in the Global Legal Services Market

Many U.S. law firms now claim to be global organizations, and they seek to occupy the same high status everywhere they work. In part, simply supporting overseas offices is an indication of status for U.S.-based firms. But firms want more than this and they strive for recognition as elite advisors around the world. In this pursuit, have firms identified a set of common characteristics and credentials that define a global lawyer? That is, is there a uniform and universal profile, or perhaps a set of assets that comprise global professional capital, which are emerging as the indicia of credibility and legitimacy apart from location? Given the U.S. identity of the firms, perhaps U.S. legal education is an element of the professional capital necessary to succeed on a global level.In this Article, U.S. legal education, specifically the U.S. LL.M. degree - a one-year post-graduate degree aimed at foreign law graduates - serves as an entry-point for unpacking the meaning of professional capital in the market for global legal services. This paper uses original data to develop a framework for analyzing the currency of U.S. legal education by focusing on two case studies, Germany and China. While the U.S. LL.M. signals value in each jurisdiction, the strength and shape of the signal is determined by host country context. Global lawyers become global only in context