Abstract
The creation of the Single European Market (SEM) presents lawyers with both an opportunity to provide legal services and a challenge to meet legal needs and to be competitive domestically and internationally. The stimulation of competition and trade in Europe and beyond, encouraged by a burgeoning of national and European regulation, is likely to lead to an increased demand for legal services across a wide field of legal practice. The opportunity to provide legal services and the challenge of meeting the demand for legal services are not new. In the last two decades or so, the way law firms are organized and the nature of services provided have been transformed in the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and western society generally.1 Several contrasting viewpoints on this transformation have emerged. Some have focussed mainly on the profession and its response to an increasingly competitive market;2 others on the conjunction between organizational imperatives within the law firm and changes in the legal and business environment;3 others still have put the main spotlight on the market for legal services itself. This chapter focuses on lawyers and the market, in the context of the Single European Market. The creation of the SEM promises a great expansion in the market for legal services. The declared goals of the SEM, combined with the use of law to achieve them; the emphasis on the need to create competitive advantage; and the likely increase in the size of the SEM all point in this direction. These will be considered in the first part. Law firms have begun restructuring in response. Some examples are presented in the second part. At the same time, barriers still exist in the market for legal services in Europe. These will be considered in the third part. In the final part, some implications of lawyers in the SEM will be reviewed.
Published Version
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