January 18, 2000 — Yomiuri Shimbun

In the United States, where people of different races and views have emigrated, it is nonetheless not the norm to try to reach a consensual understanding with one's opponent. Business problems are just as often handled in the courts as they are over a conference table. As one would imagine, such an approach has meant that the United States does not lack for attorneys. With the large number of attorneys in the United States, attorneys play a substantial role in many spheres, including society, economy, and politics. There are more than one million lawyers in the United States and the percentage of people in the United States who are lawyers is approximately fifty times that in Japan.

With one million plus American lawyers, there are, obviously, many great lawyers in the United States and more and more, countries from all around the world are using American lawyers for their international legal work.

"In the United States, it is necessary to examine all different possible issues and then incorporate them into a contract. Because of this, contracts in the United States can be quite long. The United States also suffers from many wasteful lawsuits, based in part on the unwillingness to try to reach a consensus," says Satoru Murase, an attorney with the 400+ attorney New York law firm of Bingham Dana.

Will the globalization of American law lead other countries to become more litigious?

Attorney Murase answers: "We cannot even think of Japan becoming the same as the United States because we do not even really know if that would be good or bad."

The Americanization of Global law is also leading to a huge increase in foreign companies seeking to have their disputes resolved by using American lawyers or even bringing lawsuits in American courts. Dan Harris, a Seattle, Washington, based international litigation lawyer told us about a case he recently successfully handled on behalf of a Russian Far East helicopter company. This Sakhalin Island helicopter company retained Mr. Harris to bring a lawsuit on its behalf in a Seattle Federal court to recover three helicopters taken from the Russian company in Malaysia.

"I am constantly contacted by foreign companies wanting to pursue their lawsuits in the United States," says Mr. Harris. I think the reason for this is that the American courts (along with those in England) are probably the most respected in the world. People know American lawyers are well trained and they know the American justice system is fair." Mr. Harris, whose firm's work is about 90% international (Russia, Korea, Japan, China, Vietnam, etc.) says he is most frequently asked by companies in emerging market countries to bring their lawsuits in the United States. Mr. Harris attributes this to the belief that they will be treated more fairly and get a quicker resolution in the United States than they would in either their home countries or in the countries of their adversaries.

With the Globalization of the legal business the competition for clients increases. Founded in 1849, Davis Polk & Wardwell is a top-flight New York law firm with a great history. Its New York office has a large room decorated with luxurious paintings and an elegant atmosphere. In its early days, its attorneys were white males from wealthy families, but today, its attorneys number 30 nationalities.

The competition for legal clients has expanded to include the big international accounting firms, who are in the midst of adding lawyers and are themselves no strangers to globalization.

The "Big Five" accounting firms earn nearly $60 billion dollars per year and that is growing at a rate of around 20% annually, up from 2% growth as recently as 1993. The greater part of this business is audit work, but the revenues from corporate tax advice, stock issuances, and other law related matters is increasing as well.

The American Bar Association is aware of the extent to which these accounting firms have penetrated the legal arena and has sought the assistance of the United States Department of Justice to challenge the legality of the accounting firms' involvement in legal matters.

The Big Five accounting firms are on the same level as the big law firms in terms of the number of lawyers on staff. Arthur Anderson has 2700 attorneys on staff, Price Waterhouse Coopers has 1500, and Deloitte & Touche has 910. That would place them in first, second and seventh places in law firm size, according to the National Law Journal.

Attorney Murase predicts that "the struggle between accounting and law firms will continue and become violent."