I may soon be having discussions with a woman who I am dating long distance about our future. She is a Russian citizen, living in Russia, who practices Russian law for a living. I’m trying to determine if that translates to anything useful, if she was to move to the United States.
Some states, including mine, appear to offer Bar certification as a foreign legal consultant. In theory she could take some courses here and, potentially in less than a year, be able to practice again.
But I’m not sure how to guage whether that is worth it? If you are a foreign legal consultant for Jamaica, living in Wisconsin, I feel like that’s probably not worth spending the time to get the Bar license, let alone hanging out a shingle.
Is there any good way to be able to get a sense for how much work there would be available, per city, and how much one could expect to earn?
The first question is exactly what kind of law does she practice? I would guess there would be a market from larger businesses doing international trade and investment with Russia–but this is going to be specialized and the vast majority of Russian lawyers would not be trained in these areas just like the vast majority of American lawyers.
She works at a construction company practicing corporate law.
There is a fair amount of shipping with Russia that comes through my city.
There is already one dedicated Russian legal consultant in town. I have emailed him, but if the niche is so small, he might not be able to afford encouraging a competitor. I’m hoping for an alternate way of knowing.
Wouldn’t it also depend on where you live? Consultants often need to actually visit their clients so living where there is more businesses would be beneficial.
No, because the law that a US firm trading with Russia is going to engage with is, mostly, not Russian law. (And in particular it’s not likely to be Russian corporate law, which is what your friend’s expertise is.)
Plus, the fact that there is $2bn in trade betwen your state and Russia does not mean that there are seven enterprises with about $300m in revenue from that trade. It’s much more likely to be a larger number of firms with smaller individual Revenues.
Should it ever prove useful to anyone searching the internet:
I found a few more people registered as Russian legal consultants locally and emailed them, after posting the OP. Two of those have replied. Both have learned American law and practice that, and one is also a law professor - so I’m inclined to believe her response.
Both of them are saying that it’s not worth getting the license and that there’s zero demand for it. One of them specifically says that she let her foreign legal consultant license expire, since it didn’t do anything for her.
There is still the first guy I emailed, who only has the license for Russian legal consulting, and offers no further services, who hasn’t replied. Given the other responses, I assume that either he has collected all of the business, or he failed to do this sort of research. If he is making a living, that would be at least some data for others to use, for other countries, to try and calculate what the market can support (looking at import/export data). So I’ll update the thread if he responds.
It is very hard to imagine that any import/export data gives you any useful information for such a subject.
The mere importing or exporting of goods to a country does not normally require any engagement with the domestic law of the country.
The instances where you may care about the domestic law of a country is if you have some kinds of more substantial relationship such as a joint production or a marketing and distribution relationship inside of the other country.
The real demand for consultancy services for a foreign country domestic law would be in investment centers like New York or London or with some case of firms that are doing a particular sector contracting work inside of that country - the gas and the oil services perhaps.
Trying to base your ideas on import/export is starting from the wrong conception.