Call for Papers: Professional Responsibility, AALS – New Orleans

Call for Papers [to select a speaker] for the Program of the Section of Professional Responsibility at the 2010 AALS Annual Meeting (from Legal Profession Blog)

New Orleans, Friday, Jan. 8, 2010, 10:30-12:15

TOPIC: The 2008 FATF Lawyer Guidance

Submission Deadline: September 1, 2009: Length: 3-5 Pages

The AALS Section of Professional Responsibility is issuing a call for papers to select one speaker to participate in its 2010 AALS Annual Meeting program. This program will be held in New Orleans on Friday, Jan. 8, 2010, from 10:30-12:15pm. The paper should address the program topic, which is “The Transformative Effect of International Initiatives on Lawyer Practice and Regulation: A Case Study Focusing on the FATF & its 2008 Lawyer Guidance.” (The theme for the annual meeting is “transformative law.”)

Even if you have never heard of the FATF or its October 2008 Lawyer Guidance, please don’t rule yourself out of this call for papers – you are in good company! One reason why we selected this topic for the Annual Meeting program is our belief that few legal ethics scholars (or other scholars) are aware of the FATF’s legal profession gatekeeper initiatives, even though they have the potential to implicate the lawyer-client relationship in significant practice areas and are likely to change, in some significant ways, the manner in which these U.S. lawyers practice. See Risk-Based Approach Guidance for Legal Professionals (Oct. 23, 2008)[FATF 2008 Lawyer Guidance]; Kevin L. Shepherd, Guardians at the Gate: The Gatekeeper Initiative and the Risk Based Approach for Transactional Lawyers, 43 Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Journal 607 (2009).

The speakers in Part 1 of this program include U.S. lawyer Kevin Shepherd and U.K. lawyer Colin Tyre, who are among the handful of lawyers who were primarily responsible for handling the negotiations with the 34 intergovernmental organization called the FATF during the last 18 months leading up to the adoption of the October 2008 FATF Lawyer Guidance. They will address the history and negotiating dynamics that led to the 2008 FATF Lawyer Guidance, explain how it is being implemented in the U.S., and will address its implementation in other countries (some of whom now have ethics rules or laws implementing FATF principles). The speakers in Part 2 of the program come from different legal disciplines and will offer their reflections on the FATF lawyer gatekeeper developments. The speakers include Professors Tom Morgan, a leading legal ethics and antitrust expert, Ellen Podgor, who is a white collar crime expert and the author of the white collar crime blog, and James Gathii, whose area of expertise includes international commercial (and comparative) law. Laurel Terry will moderate the panel. The fourth panelist in Part 2 will be chosen by this Call for Papers. We invite you to review the FATF 2008 Lawyer Guidance and submit a brief paper that contains your reflections about the significance of these FATF developments, their likely influence in the future, the extent to which they represent a transformative change in law-making or lawyer regulation, the increasing role of gatekeeper initiatives and international initiatives in U.S. lawyer regulation, or any other aspect of interest.

If you would like more information before responding to the “call for papers,” please email Laurel Terry at LTerry [at] psu.edu. We have a four page “briefing paper” with additional information and resources that we can email to you.

If you would like to be considered for the panel via this “call for papers,” please submit a 3-5 page (double-spaced) summary of your proposed remarks. The deadline is September 1, 2009 and submissions should be sent to Professor Laurel Terry, Penn State Dickinson School of Law, LTerry[at] psu.edu. She will forward the submissions (without names) to the committee reviewing the submissions. The Section will notify the AALS of the selected speaker by October 1, 2009; the selected speaker will be notified shortly afterwards. Panelists are eligible as long as their papers are not in print before the January 8, 2010 AALS Annual Meeting. (The paper may be accepted for publication.) The AALS will distribute at the Annual Meeting a publication that announces the speakers selected by a “Call for Papers.” The AALS also has a section on its website where it can post the papers from the “Call for Papers.”