28 Set Transnational lawyer
Globalization has changed the way we communicate, the way we trade and the way we work. Lawyers that were upon a time professionals trapped in national boundaries are no longer condemned to practice exclusively whether within a country, a State or a studio. Globalization has exercised its enormous influence on lawyers and the way we work by forcing us more than inviting us to open our professional world. Communication technologies, Free Trade Agreements that have been signed and will be signed everywhere as well as immigration flows are just few examples of detonators of the once perfect and nonetheless boring professional bubble of lawyers.
Regarding the benefits offered by communication technologies, social media offers us at cero cost the possibility to be known by our expertise by both clients and colleagues around the world, and it offers us as well the possibility to build unimaginable professional networks that may contribute to our professional growth thanks to the exchange of knowledge and experience.
In this same path, Free Trade Agreements increases our possibilities of counseling clients both nationals and foreigners as well as expatriates that want to take advantage of their knowledge on their homelands to invest and strengthening trade bonds. By this way, the translational lawyer may offer a wide portfolio of counseling services in different areas of law such as private international law, labor and Foreign Direct Investment laws and not only, this strengthening of trade goes hand in hand with immigration issues from family to labor that will demand a highly qualified legal approach.
Opportunities brought to lawyers by globalization arrive hand in hand with duties and challenges of equal or even higher magnitude. For instance, the possibility to practice in a foreign country involves the commitment to study and up-dating your knowledge of both your national law and foreign law which alone demands a considerable effort. Once you opt to become a transnational lawyer, you will need to improve your fluency in different languages and you will have also to comply with ethical norms of several countries that will redefine completely your professional approach to clients and colleagues as well as the communication technologies and social media contents.
Personally, as a Colombian lawyer who is currently pursuing the dream of becoming a transnational lawyer in Spain and Italy and that is facing all the challenges it involves, I may say that I am happy to have this opportunity of learning new languages, legal frameworks and ethical approaches for the legal profession as well as the opportunity to build a transnational legal network that opens my mind and contributes to my professional growth, because the world has changed, globalization has changed it, and lawyers are receiving an opportunity that was unthinkable years ago, which is the possibility to make of world our working place.