LA LEX MERCATORIA ED I RAPPORTI CON LE LAW FIRMS
Creators: name: MARCHESE, CARL RICKARD
Publisher: name: Universit� degli Studi di Milano
Year: 2011

description: The so-called lex mercatoria and the role of the law firms
The purpose of my prospective research is to understand to what extent law firms cooperate
in the process of creation, development and application of lex mercatoria. Two
contrasting theses have actually been put forward in Italy about this question. On the one
side, Professor Maria Rosaria Ferrarese highlighted the role of the law firms in this
field, portraiting them as the most important source of the legal standards which lex
mercatoria is said to consist of. On the other side, other scholars, among them Professor
Maurizio Lupoi, a renowned comparatist, pointed to corporate lawyers, who work for the
most important multinational corporations, as the true inventors and framers of such
standards.
As can be seen in the index attached, my research project shall focus, first of all, on
globalization from a socio-legal perspective, for globalization processes, as upheld by Prof.
Gunther Teubner in his Economic Globalization and the Emergence of Lex Mercatoria, has
seriously challenged the traditional hierarchy of legal rules, inherited from the XIX century,
while making a number of non-state law sources flourish ? as is usually said ? in a space
without frontiers. On these bases, I intend to venture into a synthetic reconstruction of lex
mercatoria in a historic perspective, looking, amongst others, at the legal standards that
were produced and respected in the late Middle Ages by those merchants who sought to
avail themselves of a uniform law for their commercial transactions. Then I plan to analyze
the new lex mercatoria in detail. At this stage of my research, I intend to understand what
is lex mercatoria (doubts are recurrently raised about whether such thing actually exists),
what are its purported characters, why numerous authors state that lex mercatoria is
based on the principles of the common law and, finally, whether this set of standards really
happens to be the new legal landscape which inspires legal transactions in both the
common law and the civil law countries.
A second part of my work should be devoted to the US legal profession, with an
eye, especially, to what has been termed as mega-lawyering and the role of big law firms.
Law firms originated in the USA and are increasingly spreading out all over the world, not
only because American firms are opening their branches in foreign countries, but also
because it is their model itself that is flourishing almost everywhere, including Italy.
American law firms are usually very large companies where several hundreds
lawyers group in a rigid hierarchical order (partners and associates) and work together on
behalf of first class clients, especially big corporations, covering all legal fields, from
consultancy to litigation, from criminal law to bankruptcy law, antitrust law, etc. In this
chapter, I plan to describe US law schools, bar exams and the American legal profession in
its current shape. My attention should especially focus on the structure of the law firms,
their hierarchy, pro bono activities, diversity policies, etc.
The last part of my research should be empirical. As said above, my purpose is to
understand who really creates lex mercatoria, which is said to be spreading all over the
world alongside with globalization processes and, more generally, which role is really
played by first class lawyers, either private counsellors or corporate figures, in the field of
international and transnational business.