Outline of the JASL Plenary Symposium 2011

Abstract

We held three organizers’ symposiums about “The New Field of Legal Profession and the Sociology of Law: Current Transformation of Law and Lawyers” at the JASL Annual Conference 2011. Especially, the plenary symposium called “Works, Roles, Ethics and Identity of the Legal Profession in the Globalizing Society” was the big success session of them. The purpose of the plenary symposium was to discuss issues about lawyer’s new works, roles, ethics and identity under the great legal change caused by the globalization. We imagine the “globalization” as the development of highly complex global trade system and the expansion of the multi-ethnic world society prompted by the political multi-polarization brought by the end of the Cold War and ICT (information & communication technology) innovation since 1980s. The size of financial market has been multiplied and technologically supported by ICT. Supply chains management in manufacture industries are expanded all over the world. Everywhere in the world, we can see various ethnic people. On the other hand, there remain traditional local communities where people are living as old days. The polarization between the highly globalised world society and the domestic local society has become prominent and sometimes causes conflicts. Globalization has transformed the legal system into dual structure; the globalised legal system and the traditional community legal system. On the global level, there are not only formal legal norms implemented by governmental or international authorities, but also soft laws with which we comply without any governmental legally-binding force. We have confirmed that more and more international trade arbitration and mediation has been utilized to resolve international disputes. New legal forms have forced business frameworks to change substantially. Such great changes have prompted us to address various corporate legal needs, and subsequently, lawyers’ field of work is becoming more business-oriented than ever. How to evaluate this transformation is the agenda of the plenary symposium at the JASL Annual Conference 2011.