David Wilkins: How the Legal Profession Can Face Globalization

Lawyers, law firms and law schools have to redefine their roles in order to face ever growing globalization. Bocconi students, alumni and scholars have the chance to discuss the topic with an outstanding expert of the legal profession such as David B. Wilkins, Lester Kissel Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Global Initiatives on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School, who will give a series of three lectures at Bocconi University on September 14th, 15th and 16th.

"Professor Wilkins is the leading expert on the relationship between the legal profession job market and law schools", says Professor Cesare Cavallini, who organized the three 2015 Lectures. Global Aspects of Globalization. "He studies how legal profession's evolution has to be factored in by law schools when defining programs content, teaching methods and professors' recruitment". Both Professor Wilkins and Professor Cavallini are scholars of civil procedural law.

The first lecture, "Disruptive Innovation" and the Future of Law Firms in the Global Age of More for Less, is directed to a large audience of students and lawyers interested in understanding the evolution of the legal profession. The second lecture, Globalization, Lawyers and Emerging Economies, will cover topics at the intersection of law, economics and social sciences. The final one, Making Global Lawyers: Redefining legal education for the twenty-first century, goes to the heart of law schools role in educating a new breed of lawyers, able to face the challenges of globalization.

"In Italy", Professor Cavallini says, "the need to change is more urgent than elsewhere, due to the anachronistic rules that govern access to the profession. Let's hope that Professor Wilkins' lectures can spread this awareness and can be a harbinger of future exchanges between our universities".