PROFESSOR EMERITA TERRY PUBLISHES ARTICLE ON ABA “SUMMITS”
March 2023 — Professor Emerita Laurel S. Terry’s article entitled The Role of the ABA’s “Summits” in Facilitating Global Networks and International Cross-Border Legal Practice recently was published in a Symposium honoring Professor Bob Lutz. Her fifty-page article documented a decade of international “summits” sponsored by the ABA and explained their significance in helping establish global legal profession networks.
Professor Robert Lutz retired from Southwestern Law School in 2021, after a distinguished career. The 2023 Symposium issue of the Southwestern Journal of International Law reflects his wide-ranging international law interests and the important connections that he helped facilitate during the course of his career. The Symposium includes contributions from current or former legal academics, law school deans, and legal practitioners, as well as individuals who had served as judges, in U.S. government positions, or in international organizations. The authors include numerous individuals from outside the United States, in addition to U.S. authors. The Symposium, which spanned more than six-hundred pages, featured twenty-three articles that were dedicated to Professor Lutz.
Professor Terry’s article documents fourteen gatherings that were organized by either the ABA Section of International Law’s Transnational Legal Practice Committee or by the ABA Standing Committee on International Trade in Legal Services [ITILS] or its predecessor entities. (Both Professor Terry and Professor Lutz are longtime members of these groups.) As Professor Terry’s article explains, Professor Lutz was a driving force behind the ABA gatherings, which were held between 2004 and 2014, and were referred to by the organizers as “Summits.” Professor Terry’s article examines the impact of these ABA Summits and explains why they played a critical role in helping establish global legal profession networks among U.S. legal profession stakeholders and stakeholders from other countries and organizations, including the CCBE. Her article concludes by exploring the lasting legacy of these "Summits" and the networks they helped facilitate. Professor Terry’s Symposium article builds upon her prior work, including a 2019 article about global legal profession networks and a 2020 article in the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics about the global networks of lawyer regulation stakeholders.
Professor Emerita Laurel S. Terry, who held the inaugural H. Laddie Montague, Jr. Chair in Law and was Dickinson Law’s inaugural Associate Dean for Research and New Faculty Development, is a three-time Fulbright recipient who writes and speaks about the impact of globalization on the legal profession, especially with respect to regulatory issues. Her scholarship has identified emerging issues for the legal profession and urged stakeholder engagement, new initiatives, and regulatory reform. In addition to speaking at academic and professional conferences, she has been invited to speak about her scholarship to organizations that include the Conference of Chief Justices, the National Conference of Bar Examiners, the National Organization of Bar Counsel, the National Conference of Bar Presidents, the CCBE, which represents EU’s legal profession and legal regulators, the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, the International Institute of Law Association Chief Executives, the International Bar Association, and the International Conference of Legal Regulators.