Federalizing Legal Ethics, Nationalizing Law Practice, and the Future of the American Legal Profession in a Global Age

This Article is organized as a response to Zaharias’s influential paper, revisiting each of his four analytical steps. Following Zacharias, Part II documents the growing nationalization and globalization of law practice, and argues that the transformation of law practice renders the state-based regulation of lawyers ineffective. Part III parts ways with Zacharias’s thesis. It asserts that nationalizing, by federalizing, legal ethics is not warranted by changing practice realities and that, worse, federalizing legal ethics without more will leave some of the most troubling aspects of the transformation of law practice, including client needs, unaddressed. Instead, Part III argues that the growing nationalization of law practice on the ground requires nationalizing the regulatory approach to law practice and offers a blueprint for such reform. In other words, it concludes that although Federalizing Legal Ethics may not have succeeded in compellingly justifying a need to federalize the rules of professional conduct, it accomplished a far much more ambitious agenda—laying a foundation for the nationalization of law practice. Finally, Part IV briefly explores some of the implications of nationalizing the regulatory approach to law practice in the context of the increased globalization of law practice