Carlos Valls, invited to participate in Buenos Aires to an international conference on professional ethics

On 13 and 14 March, Carlos Valls participated, as Senior Co-Vice Chair of the Professional Ethics Committee of the IBA, at the conference “21^st Century Challenges and Threats faced by legal practitioners: a multi-jurisdictional perspective”, organised in Buenos Aires by its Colegio Público de Abogados de la Capital Federal (with the support from the IBA). Carlos formed part of Panels 1 (“Main issues under Ethics Codes governing the practice of law”) and 6 (“Towards a new scheme of disciplinary power on attorneys”). The full conference may be seen at You Tube, on the following links:

At the conference, many interesting topics were dealt with, inter alia confidentiality and marketing the legal services, or the limits of confidentiality vis a vis the anti-money laundering regulations, referral fess between lawyers, or sanctions and the procedure on infringement of the deontological rules and their adequacy to current times. Carlos Valls maintained that self regulation of the profession through the bar associations, which has seen historically the preferred solution in many jurisdictions, will only be maintained on the long term if sanctions are increased and and imposed with more rgiouur against professionals which act against the trust that society deposits in lawyers.