Guest post from the Center on the Global Legal Profession, Indiana University-Bloomington, Maurer School of Law (Director, Professor Jayanth Krishnan)
While Brazil today has a legal market that allows for foreign lawyers and foreign firms, there are existing regulations that have restrictions. For example, foreign lawyers are barred from practicing domestic law or litigation, and Brazilian-licensed lawyers working for foreign firms or partnering with foreign lawyers cannot do either as well.
This was not always the case, however. Until 1963, there was little regulation on the legal profession. Beginning in 1913, elite American lawyers traveled to Brazil, with some even becoming prominent domestic practitioners. They partnered with local elite lawyers (who maintained their domestic privileges) and served as key brokers for U.S. businesses seeking market-entry.
The Center on the Global Legal Profession at Indiana University-Bloomington’s Maurer School of Law has just released a paper analyzing this subject from an academic, empirical perspective. As the study finds, sophisticated American and Brazilian legal elites between the 1910s and 1960s capitalized on the lack of regulation to advance their financial interests, and in the process transformed Brazil’s corporate legal sector. You can read the study in full by clicking here.
The study was conducted by V. Dias, J. Pence, and J. Krishnan. Dias, a licensed Brazilian lawyer, and Pence both speak English and Portuguese. Krishnan, a law professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, served as visiting law professor at the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) where preliminary research on this topic was conducted. The authors consulted volumes of documents located in historical archives as well as those provided by relatives, friends, and colleagues of the American and Brazilian lawyers who worked in Brazil during this era. The team also reviewed a range of secondary sources, including bar journal articles, newspaper clippings, and legal and business periodicals. Finally, extensive interviews with key American and Brazilian lawyers were conducted.
The authors welcome your comments and feedback on the paper. You may contact them at:
