After a three year Covid-19 induced break, the Inter-Pacific Bar Association (“IPBA”) kicked off its (31st) Annual Meeting and Conference in Dubai today. This was the first IPBA in-person event since the outbreak of the pandemic. Not surprisingly, Day 1 session topics followed and refleced the conference theme, “One World: Law & The Environment Beyond Covid.” The keynote session focused on the strategies and technologies deployed by the court system in each speaker’s jurisdiction to adapt to the Covid-19 pandemic and to enable their court systems to continue to function uninterrupted. This session had speakers from Dubai, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Kuwait, and the United Kingdom.
The keynote session was followed by two sets of concurrent committee sessions. I attended the “ESG – Trade & Sustainability” and “The Next Generation Lawyers: Becoming Top 40 under 40” sessions. In the “ESG-Trade & Sustainability” session, the panel discussed key ESG and sustainability developments in their respective jurisdictions and what companies in those jurisdictions are doing to meet their compliance obligations. The panel was composed of lawyers from Belgium, the United States, Peru, Argentina, Singapore, and Malaysia. I found it particularly interesting to be able to get both “developed nations” and “developing nations” perspectives on how ESG issues are handled.
The session on “The Next Generation Lawyers: Becoming Top 40 under 40” provided strategies on what younger lawyers can and should be doing to develop their practices. The panel make up for this session was also geographically diverse, with young lawyers from India, Singapore, Germany, Dubai, and Poland speaking about their views on marketing a legal practice in their own countries and internationally. That diversity in background provided valuable insights into some of the issues young lawyers in those jurisdictions experience in their journey to develop their competencies in the profession.
Overall, Day 1 was a big success.
On March 10, I will be moderating the panel on “Trade Sanctions and the Future of World Trade.” So if you have any questions you would like me to ask, please let me know with a comment below or live in person in Dubai. For the entire schedule of this massive event, go here.
