Translation For Lawyers

We've blogged about professional legal translation services and bilingual attorneys. The International Bar Association (IBA), in response to the growing number of global or cross-border cases, has developed an International Code of Attorney Ethics. Accordingly, a lawyer who undertakes professional work in a jurisdiction where he is not a full member of the local profession shall adhere to the standards of professional ethics in the jurisdiction in which he has been admitted. He shall also observe all ethical standards which apply to lawyers of the country where he is working. Of course this seems like it says nothing - that you have to adhere to both your home country and the foreign country's codes, but what about when they contradict? This, along with the general vagueness of the Code in general, is why it is often overlooked as a governing document.

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Multilingual e-Discovery generates an on-going need for professional legal translation services. According to Model Rule 1.6: "A lawyer shall not reveal information relating to the representation of a client unless the client gives informed consent, the disclosure is impliedly authorized in order to carry out the representation or the disclosure is permitted otherwise."">translation services. According to Model Rule 1.6: "A lawyer shall not reveal information relating to the representation of a client unless the client gives informed consent, the disclosure is impliedly authorized in order to carry out the representation or the disclosure is permitted otherwise."

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We've blogged about legal translation services and legal interpreter services for managing international discovery. The field of electronic discovery is still in its infancy and although it is easy to think there's little to navigate the ever-changing legal landscape, the Model Rules of Professional Conduct can serve as a roadmap. Further, recent cases are beginning to create a foundation of rules of e-discovery and attorney ethics.

First, the why: Why does e-discovery create ethical issues?

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We've blogged about legal translation and legal interpretation services in the context of international child custody cases. According to the case JKN v JCN, which involves the doctrine of forum non conveniens, it was held that a court can decide not to exercise its jurisdiction in a divorce case if it seems better overall for the case to be in another state. The goal of this doctrine is to have the couple divorced in only one state or country, as opposed to two. However, in this case, the question was whether Europe's Brussels II treaty requires a country to exercise its divorce jurisdiction, in contradiction to the traditional doctrine of forum non conveniens.

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We've blogged about Feng Shui for attorneys and Chinese-English and English-Chinese legal and trademark translation services. China's governing copyright bureau recently released new rules for copyright pledge registration. In China, copyrights, like other property rights, can be pledged as financial security. The new rules eliminate the intermediary steps that were previously required and instead allows one to declare directly to the State Copyright Bureau, who is responsible for registering copyright pledges.

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We've blogged about legal translations of foreign prenuptial agreements. Professional multilingual legal translation and interpreting services play an important role in international divorce cases. The European Union Council recently adopted the Rome III Regulation that aims to create enhanced cooperation in the area of the law applicable to divorce and legal separation. According to the new regulations, spouses are allowed to agree to designate the applicable law to divorce and legal separation so long as the law is either:

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Legal language translation and legal interpretation services play an important role both for legal filings and for presenting testimonial evidence in international divorce cases where parties speak different languages and are representatives of different cultures.

In the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals case Cuellar v. Joyce, where a father took his daughter from her Panamanian mother from Australia to the US, the court ruled that it was a wrongful removal but denied the child's return based on Article 13 of the Hague Convention, commonly referred to as the grave risk exception.

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We know that the use of language and foreign language translations is often a sticking point in international arbitration. Another perennial question in international arbitrations is whether or not the nomination of arbitrators should be a fundamental right of a party. This is mainly related to the question of what is acceptable or ethical behavior for international arbitrators.

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