The legal profession has long been identified as a power broker between political, corporate, state-bureaucratic and academic elites. Recent research has focused on the emergence of new professionals who are willing and able to work across national frontiers. As professional go-betweens, lawyers – alongside accountants, financial advisers or wealth managers – have become essential actors of the emerging “transnational legal field”, coordinating strategies across jurisdictions and forming a strong component of professional services firms.
The objective of this workshop is threefold. First, it aims to take stock of the ongoing international and interdisciplinary debates. Second, it intends to focus on the historical dimension and to deepen our understanding of the changes over time of the legal profession and its role in the development of global capitalism. Third, it endeavors to promote an actors-centered approach of the role of law and law firms as a key component in the business world.
The event is organised by Thibaud Giddey (University of Zurich) and Benoît Majerus (University of Luxembourg).
Provisionnal programme
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13.30
Welcome and Introduction (Giddey-Majerus)
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13.45
Kickoff Roundtable – Interviewing lawyers: methods, benefits, challenges, feedback (Ankersmit – Avril – Calderon – Dezalay – Dyrendahl – Giddey – Gottlieb – Hommes – Lauria – Majerus – Mangset – Pastre – Serrano – Staven)
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SESSION 1
Chair: Matthieu Leimgruber (Zurich) -
14.30
The Code of the Gift: Lawyers and Philanthropy
Sophie Serrano (Geneva) -
15.00
Who defines whether wealth is a common good or private business? How tax lawyers leapt like salmon from expertise to policy on fish farming taxation
Helle Dyrendahl Staven / Marte Mangset / Oskar Granæs Olsen (Oslo University) -
15.30
Coffee break
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SESSION 2
Chair: Grace Ballor (Bocconi, Collegium Helveticum) -
16.00
Banking on Resistance: a Financial History of Araucanía, 1860s-1870s
Damian Clavel (Zurich) -
16.30
The suit under the gown. The role of competition lawyers in EU integration
Lola Avril (CNRS, Paris 1 Sorbonne) -
17.15
Keynote: The Business of Law. Lawyering in-between the Public, the Private and the Commons
Antoine Vauchez (CNRS) -
18.00
Workshop dinner
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SESSION 3
Chair: Evelyne Schmid (Lausanne) -
9.30
Crafting International Investment law in the 1950s and 1960s: the role of lawyers of Royal Dutch Shell
Laurens Anskersmit / Wiebe Hommes (Amsterdam) -
10.00
Negotiating Sovereignty: How International Arbitrators Navigate the Arbitration Backlash to Protect Their Lucrative Business
Paule Pastre (Bern) -
10.30
Coffee break
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SESSION 4
Chair: Debjani Bhattacharyya (Zurich) -
11.00
Abe Fortas and the Remaking of Empire in Puerto Rico’s Operation Bootstrap
Ana Calderon (Yale) -
11.30
The ‘Africa’ corporate bar in Paris: imperial revivals and neoliberalism
Sara Dezalay -
12.00
Lunch
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SESSION 5
Chair: Monika Dommann (Zurich) -
13.30
Sweatshop: Financialization and Proletarianization at Wall Street Law Firms in the 1980s
Dylan Gottlieb (Bentley University) -
14.00
Business Lawyers in Switzerland (1950s-1990s): a cog in the internationalization of the Swiss economy
Thibaud Giddey (Zurich) -
14.30
Local lawyers, global players: business lawyers in Panama
Sol Lauria / Benoît Majerus (Panama / Luxembourg) -
15.15
Concluding remarks
