Addresses at IBA Annual Conference Opening Ceremony 2019

President’s address: Horacio Bernardes Neto

IBA President Horacio Bernardes Neto welcomed delegates to the Annual Conference with a speech addressing the rise of populism and the importance of multilateralism. He also focused on the opportunities and challenges brought by significant ongoing change in the legal profession.

Dear friends, dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, first of all, welcome to Seoul.

We came to this wonderful city not only because we knew that we would be so well received, but also to demonstrate the IBA’s commitment to the re-establishment of the rule of law in the whole [Korean] peninsula. We hope that very soon the peninsula can be in a state of peace and under the rule of law.

The IBA is, precisely as the United Nations is, multilateral. In 1947 [when the IBA was founded], people thought that it would be possible to solve things together, to solve problems together. People believed in multilateralism.

Nowadays, we are in the era of Brexit. We are in an era of populism. We have to face the confrontation between multilateralism and unilateralism.

Problems are only solved if they are dealt with multilaterally. There are, of course, some issues for humanity that cannot be handled by one country alone – like climate change, cybersecurity, sustainability. They have to be handled multilaterally. But what we see nowadays are threats to the rule of law from places we would never have imagined. So we have to rethink the world and perhaps be as multilateral as we used to be some years ago.

The IBA I love is multilateral, diverse, inclusive. We have our IBA Diversity and Inclusion Council, which is increasingly active. This is a subject we should keep at the forefront of our minds.

There will be more than 5,000 delegates attending this conference. We are holding more than 200 sessions, showcases, interviews, speeches and keynotes.

I invite you cordially to attend the three presidential showcase sessions, one relating to the refugee crisis, one relating to opening legal markets around the world and the third on bullying and sexual harassment in the profession.

We lawyers must be committed to ethics. We must adhere completely to legal and moral principles. Senior lawyers should lead by example. We are, at the IBA, engaged in a campaign to call the attention of the profession to the gravity of bullying and sexual harassment in the profession, [as evidenced in] our research. This is one of the very important issues that we are dealing with now, and I have dedicated part of my presidency to this project.

Research in the United States has evidenced that alcohol and drug consumption among lawyers is twice as high as in any other profession. Therefore, I’m planning a showcase in Miami on wellbeing for lawyers.

The profession has also been attacked. Nowadays, there is a conflation between the lawyer and the client. I want to mention something that happened today in the Netherlands, which was the brutal assassination of a 44-year-old lawyer called Derk Wiersum. He was killed after acting against a group of drug traffickers.

In South Korea, we know that the rule of law has been effective for many years and we must be very happy about that. I was in Finland two weeks ago, a country where the rule of law prevails. But I said there and I’m saying here, don’t take it for granted. We should never take the rule of law for granted. We lawyers must protect and promote the rule of law.

I have visited many countries to deliver the message of the rule of law, but also to share my enthusiasm for the future of the legal profession. The legal profession is changing. The IBA has set up a Task Force on the Future of Legal Services, chaired by my friend [and former IBA President] Fernando Peláez-Pier.

Clients are nowadays more sophisticated and have access to information that they didn’t have access to before. They prefer to pay for lawyers to avoid a problem than to use them to solve it – so we have to learn to be risk controllers rather than litigators.

Other players are entering our market, as we all know, and doing some part of the work we lawyers used to do. Many, many services that we used to render nowadays are rendered by third-party providers.

Technology is, of course, the driving force in the change in legal services. There is also a trend to deregulate the profession.

Before, the lawyers were the owners of the profession. Nowadays, this does not exist in many countries. The state rules. So there is a transformation going on in all aspects of the legal profession.

Multidisciplinary firms are present everywhere. They offer legal services, among others. Of course, auditing firms are expanding and rendering legal services. Lawyers nowadays have to adapt themselves to the new times. There are new roles in the profession like legal engineer, legal architect and legal designer. Such engineers, architects and designers are all lawyers. They are all good lawyers. So these are new opportunities for us lawyers.

There are new challenges in the legal profession. Many universities are creating programmes and disciplines to deal with this new world of legal services. The entrance of millennials into the profession is also something very positive. The IBA attracts young lawyers from all over the world and this is one of its big advantages. We know that they see life in a different way. And there are already firms that lose young talent because they don’t do enough social service, pro bono, access to justice work and so on. Young people want to see their firms doing that.

Law has been practised and taught the same way for decades. Now it’s time to change, and this is a great opportunity for new generations. It’s an opportunity to find ways to render access to justice more efficient, enhance the credibility of the profession and really create a new era of more accessible justice.

A video of IBA President Horacio Bernardes Neto’s address at the 2019 Annual Conference is available on the IBA Seoul website at tinyurl.com/ibaseoul

Keynote address: Ban Ki-moon

In his keynote address at the IBA Annual Conference Opening Ceremony, Ban Ki-moon, eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations, underlined the importance of lawyers in combating the erosion of the rule of law. He also remarked on the shared backgrounds and ambitions of the UN and the IBA.

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to welcome you all to the Opening Ceremony of the 2019 International Bar Association Annual Conference.

This is the first time that this huge gathering of esteemed international lawyers has been held in Seoul. I am simply honoured to have been invited to address such an important and influential group, hailing from so many continents. I take this opportunity to applaud each of you for making the journey here, whether short or long. And I know some have been of considerable length.

Our world is presently in flux. It always is, but in recent times there has been a notable acceleration. Perhaps this is due to the fact that we live in an increasingly interconnected world, where what happens in one part of our planet is immediately known, and occasionally felt, in another part.

Against this backdrop, unfortunately, and in a relatively short period, a shrinking of civil society has occurred and the rule of law is being eroded.

Imagine what the world would look like without the rule of law: no independent media; no freedom to assemble and protest peacefully; no freedom to think individual ideas and articulate an opinion; no independent judiciary; and no independent legal profession. Just imagine that for a moment.

This erosion is happening gradually. You are the chief guardians of the rule of law, and, in this regard, must increase your unified efforts to stand firm in halting its erosion. As we all know, the rule of law promotes inclusive economic growth and builds accountable institutions that underpin global sustainable development. It protects individuals and businesses alike.

As the eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations, I am fully aware of the IBA’s rich history and its founding principles. Now, I would like to briefly remind you of the establishment of the UN in 1945, the IBA in 1947, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Each were the product of like-minded individuals determined, through passion, compassion, integrity and a guiding sense of justice, to carve out a better world for future generations. What these key institutions have in common is that they were all developed by diverse representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds hailing from all regions of the world.

As the IBA matches the UN in both structure and ambition, I believe this makes it easier to talk to you, because the issues that are important to the UN are also critical to the IBA.

With such topics as climate change, poverty eradication and cultural diversity, and the promotion of human rights, mental health and gender equality, it is clear that there is much work to be done, with new challenges always emerging.

However, I firmly believe that each of you will contribute in some way towards what is required in these areas. Indeed, we should be reminded of an old proverb that says: ‘It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.’

In this respect, the work of the IBA relating to business and human rights, gender equality and climate change, as well as promoting justice and upholding the principle of accountability are all illuminated candles. They are lit in alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

In addition, I feel particularly connected to the IBA in other ways too, knowing that Mary Robinson, Chair of The Elders, of which I am a Deputy Chair, and the late Nelson Mandela, Founder of The Elders, both have longstanding links to the substantive work of the IBA. Mary Robinson is working on climate justice and Nelson Mandela was the Founding Honorary President of the IBA’s Human Rights Institute.

Before concluding my remarks, I would like to emphasise that an independent legal profession and judiciary are the cornerstone of functioning democracies, and that as much as possible needs to be done to safeguard them.

Thanks to your active participation, I am confident that this conference will be crowned a great success.

Please allow me to finish by quoting the late Dr Martin Luther King Jr, who once said: ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’

Thank you very much for your attention.

A video of Ban Ki-moon’s keynote address at the 2019 IBA Annual Conference is available on the IBA Seoul website at tinyurl.com/ibaseoul