Globalization, Lawyers, and Emerging Economies: The Rise, Transformation, and Significance of the New Corporate Legal Ecosystem in India, Brazil, and China

Abstract

Beginning in the 1990s, India, Brazil, and China have each developed a distinct legal ecosystem, comprised of new (or newly repurposed) domestic corporate law firms, foreign law firms competing (on the ground or virtually) to serve both foreign and domestic clients, general counsel offices of both domestic and multinational companies, and law schools either designed or retooled to supply lawyers qualified to practice law. In this Article, we utilize data from an unprecedented set of empirical studies to document the rise of this new ecosystem in these three important emerging economies, and to develop grounded theory about the forces that have produced this transformation, and that help to explain differences among the three jurisdictions. Specifically, we argue that differences in what we call the gearing in the relative importance of the three key elements in the legal ecosystems that have developed in India, Brazil, and China – law firms, clients, and legal education – can be explained, in part, by differences in what we will call the macro-level gearing in the relative power of the state, the market, and the – both between all three countries and the United States, and among the three jurisdictions. This difference has been most pronounced in China, where the dominance of the state gear in shaping the legal contrasts sharply with both the U.S. market driven model, and the influence of the bar in shaping the micro-level ecosystems in India and Brazil. We conclude by offering some tentative thoughts about the implications of our findings for a rapidly globalizing legal services in which a growing number of states are beginning to exert greater control at the macro-level.