Globalization, Lawyers, and Emerging Economies: The Case of Brazil

Abstract

In the 1990s Brazil and other emerging economies went through a major transformation. Closed economies were opened, foreign investment encouraged, and many state-owned enterprises privatized. This “global transformation” had a major impact on the Brazilian legal system. While many parts of the legal system were affected, the corporate law profession changed the most. This sector includes all the institutions and actors that provide legal advice to corporations whether domestic and foreign, public or private. Global transformation brought about major changes in the national political economy, led to a flood of new laws governing corporate activity, and created a demand for new kinds of legal services to help companies manage the new legal environment. This led to rapid growth of the complex of institutions that provide corporate legal services and affected the way lawyering was practiced and organized. Many forces came together to give new shape to the professional identity of lawyers, the structures they work in, and the roles they play. The result was the creation of a new and powerful segment of the legal profession whose activities had profound impacts on the rest of the profession, the legal system, the operation of enterprises (both public and private), state policy and global governance. In this book, we describe the growth of the corporate legal sector in Brazil, and the impact of this development on law-making, legal education, regulation of the legal profession, public interest law, trade policy, and gender roles. The book is part of a larger study of global transformation and its impact on the legal profession carried out by GLEE, the project on Globalization, Lawyers, and Emerging Economies. Based at the Harvard Law School’s Center for the Legal Profession, GLEE is currently studying these developments in Brazil, India and China, with plans to expand the project into Africa and the states of the former Soviet Union. In Brazil, GLEE’s research has been based at the law school of the Fundacao Getulio Vargas (FGV) in Sao Paulo.