The Legal Profession's Agenda No. 1: Open up

I think the solution to the inefficient justice system has been found: It's called the "Big G". Globalization --yes, it's the G word. Let the foreign lawyers come in.

Right now, the profession is loaded with corruptors: lawyers who bribe judges to win cases for clients. You can find them everywhere, ambulance chasing on seafarers, TRO buying on videoke bars, passing on loads of cash to prosecutors and arbiters in exchange for favorable rulings, and practically almost in every place except the courts where ideally the real action should be. You read their pleadings, and you wonder if your kid in kindergarten can do better. You hear them speak, and you try to decide whether it's better to argue on the rules of procedure or on the rules of grammar.

How do you get rid of these guys? Send them out of business. Bring in the competition who can deliver better services and who will not think twice about questioning improprieties committed by members of the bar and the bench. Bring in the Clarence Darrow types who can take us back into the time when being a lawyer meant something more than being rich (that's a myth, by the way). It's time we put our legal system back in the map.

Then, with the foreign lawyers, more business will come in. Investors will be more enthusiastic about doing business here if they have their lawyers around to draw them the legal roadmaps, instead of thugs who will just tell them who to bribe. More importantly, our own countrymen will get what they deserve: an efficient and graft-free justice system.

There are many other things that foreign lawyers can do for this country, which unfortunately our lawyers will not and cannot do. Roll out the carpet. I say bring them in.