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Originally Posted by Unregistered
Well CECA is a trade agreement.
The point here is essentially that given the jurisdictional nature of legal services plus other particular sociocultural factors, legal services are very unlikely to be replaced by "cheap Indian" lawyers under CECA. And by way of comparison, the EU, which is the most liberal and longest established free trade bloc, in reality sees very little free movement of lawyers practising law in other EU member states, apart from lawyers who specifically practise EU law in Brussels, Strasbourg and the ECJ in Luxembourg.
People often forget that the jurisdictional nature of law cuts both ways. As lawyers. it's not easy for us to move freely to practise in another common law jurisdiction. It's nearly impossible to practise in a non-common law jurisdiction due to regulatory criteria + likely language barrier.
We are much less internationally mobile than say a doctor, accountant or business consultant. But the converse works in our favour too and our market is quite well protected from Foreign Talent lawyers.
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Agree. The barriers of entry are too high. But there are around 1 million lawyers in India. I don't see why some of them cannot replace us.
But even with CECA, what's the impetus? The Indian market is 1.3 billion. Lawyers make up 0.07% of India. This is less lawyers per population than Singapore. In Singapore, we have 5955 lawyers for 5.9 million people (0.1% of Singapore).
Given the numbers, the Indian legal market is lucrative enough. Also, it is more likely that the competition will come from developed parts of India, not the lawyers situated in rural areas dealing with small money disputes.