Do UK law degrees qualify someone to work as a lawyer in the US? I am from Bangladesh. I did my Bachelor of Law, Masters in Law and the Bar (BPTC) from the UK. I have worked in the legal departments of companies and some freelancing in Bangladesh since 2012. I want to work in a the legal department of a US company. Can a company in the US hire someone like me for such a role?
Short Answer They will probably not hire you unless they have legal work that they need done in Bangladesh or the U.K. from a U.S. office. Long Answer Admission To The Practice Of Law In The U.S. A Bachelor of Law, Masters in Law and the Bar (BPTC) from the UK is not a satisfactory credential for employment as a lawyer in the United States. To be employed as a lawyer in the United States, you must be admitted to the practice of law in the U.S. state where you are employed (or in the District of Columbia, if you are employed there). Ordinarily, admission to the practice of law requires completion of a law degree at an American Bar Association accredited law school followed by a character and fitness background check and passage of the bar exam. It is plausible that one or more states would waive the law school requirement (in California, law school is not a pre-requisite to taking the bar exam, for example). Some states have exceptions to this requirement specifically aimed at non-U.S. lawyers. But, you will still need to take a bar exam preparation course which is typically six to eight weeks of full time study (since there are sufficiently significant differences between U.S. and U.K. law that you would probably not be able to pass the bar exam in the U.S. without it), and then pass the bar exam in a state that waived the completion of an ABA accredited law school degree, and then you will still need to complete the character and fitness review (which is very thorough). You do not need to be a U.S. citizen to practice law in the United States, but character and fitness review would almost certainly take longer. For example, a typical character and fitness review requires you to identify every place you have lived in your adult life and to provide a reference from each, and to list every traffic ticket you have ever been issued with proof that it was paid. These steps would be harder to implement for someone who has lived their entire life outside the U.S. These steps would typically take several months and would be inconvenient to conduct from outside the U.S. Immigration Requirements Of course, if the firm that hired you needed someone to engage in the practice of law in Bangladesh on its behalf, from its U.S. offices, that could be done immediately, if the employer were wiling to secure the proper work visa for you. However, even if you were qualified, usually employers aren't interested in obtaining a work visa for a foreign lawyer to do U.S. based work, as they have plenty of U.S. based lawyers admitted to the practice of U.S. law from whom they can choose. Also, many U.S. legal employers disfavor hiring someone with more than three to five years of experience, rather than someone fresh out of law school, because they want to impart to you their corporate culture and to hire someone who is junior to the existing legal employees to do the grunt work. You could be hired as a paralegal without the relevant credentials, but getting an employer to sponsor a work related visa for you (and obtaining such a visa as an employer) to be a paralegal would be very difficult.
If you're in the United States, another lawyer in a firm you've hired may or may not be your attorney, but it would not be uncommon for him to have some involvement in the case, and he would be expected to treat you as a client in terms of privilege and conflicts of interest. Just the same, this is something you need to be very direct on. &quot;Are you my attorney?&quot; or &quot;Have we established an attorney-client relationship?&quot; are going to be your best options.
In many Common Law nations, the distinction between solicitor and barrister is that the solicitors traditionally have direct access to clients and do much of the paperwork and discuss the planning with the clients. In some jurisdictions it was/is common practice that the barrister is not hired by the client but appointed by the judge. The barrister in turn works with the solicitor and presents the case in the court and has little to no access to the client. Historically, the division was much more stark, with solicitors working in the Court of Equity and barristers working in the Court of Common Law. Around the mid-1800s, the Court of Equity became defunct in the Common Law Legal system with the Court of Common Law fulfilling its duties and many Common Law nations changing how the split among lawyers now functions (often requiring separate tests to be a solicitor and a barrister). The split remains in England, Wales, Scotland, three states in Australia (New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria), Ireland (both the Republic and Northern Ireland), and Hong Kong. In these jurisdictions, a lawyer will hold only one title. In jurisdictions where lawyers may, or even are expected to, hold both titles, the system is called a “fused system”. Here, lawyers start their careers as one of the two and pick up the license to act in the other capacity later if they choose. This covers the jurisdictions of Canada, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, and the remaining Australian states. (Because Australia has a mix of fused and separated systems and state reciprocation, the three states with a separated system will reciprocate for states that allow for fusion. The reverse is not necessary, as fused states would only allow them for the license they already have.) The United States is fully fused and all lawyers are solicitor-barristers, for comparison’s sake. This is why the U.S. uses “attorney” and “lawyer” interchangeably despite the former being another term for barrister in certain jurisdictions (namely Scotland) while the latter term refers to solicitors and barristers collectively. The U.S. did previously have a separate system, but completely fused when Courts of Equity disappeared in the 1850s and, therefore, the term “solicitor” is still used in the legal profession, though these days it tends to be an artefact title for an office or position that predated the fusion (e.g., The Solicitor General of the United States a.k.a. the lawyer whose office represents the federal government in the Supreme Court). Modern usage of “solicitor” tends to refer to a government lawyer, and most of the states with Solicitor offices are one of the Original 13 States (not all of them, though). Only three states that were not part of the original 13 use the term (Ohio, West Virginia (likely a hold over from when it was part of Virginia, which no longer uses the term), and Oklahoma). It should be noted the average U.S. Citizens associate the word solicitor with traveling salesman or door-to-door evangelizers, and generally use the term in signage forbidding the practice on private property.
I'm not going to comment on the specifics of this law; rather, I think this question shows a misconception of the way the legal system works in general. Here's the question: do you actually have "legally privileged" material on your phone? If not, what's keeping you from claiming that is that it's not true, and lying to a police officer is a bad idea. And just putting a letter from your lawyer on the phone doesn't mean you've established a legal privilege--attorney-client privilege is not a magic spell, it's a reasonable system of protection that only covers certain communications. The bottom line is: the statute in general, and that clause in particular, were included in the law to protect real, important, and substantial legal right. The courts interpret the law in light of that purpose. If the police officer finds a solution that protects your rights while still carrying out the purpose of the statute, the court will be unlikely to fault him or her. In this case, if you tell the officer that there is a letter from your attorney in a particular folder, the obvious solution is for the officer not to open that folder. Problem solved. In practice, in the United States at least, these cases are dealt with routinely; computers are seized, and attorneys and judges work together to ensure that privilege is protected while still allowing reasonable access to seized materials. I would imagine the same is true in the U.K. The bottom line is: the law is not a game, and technical "gotchas" are rarely effective. Common law systems allow judges enough leeway to avoid this sort of pointless technicality.
There is a relevant rule, the "posting rule", according to which an acceptance is effective once posted (this is a quirk of acceptances). This would be as soon after 7 May 2016 as Bobby sent his letter, presumably well before the deadline. So yes, a professional lawyer would be needed. If Bobby is in Australia, it might be more complicated; if Bobby is in Norway, it's simpler because they don't have the posting rule.
This would be virtually impossible to do from scratch. If you had the guidance of someone who successfully pursued a similar legal action it might be possible. In theory you should be able to pursue grievances in court by becoming well versed in the applicable laws and rules, having impeccable attention to detail, exceptional deductive and writing skills, and getting lucky enough to run your filings through patient clerks who will tell you every time you're missing something or doing something wrong. New York Courts even offer this encouraging CourtHelp website for pro se guidance on common actions. But if you really want to attempt a pro se civil action, especially against a government entity, or other entity with essentially unlimited legal funds, you not only need all of the above but also some sort of assistance from somebody who knows the system. I would spend as much time looking for sympathetic advocacy groups and lawyers offering pro bono service as I would reading relevant law and procedure. (One more thing: The word "quick" is never used in conjunction with formal legal actions, except in jest ;)
Given that you're centrally keeping customer financial assets, you're looking at a banking license. At that point, the question is not whether you need a lawyer, but how many. "Note that the issuer/bank would not itself offer currency exchange". Neither the Fed nor the ECB do, and quite a few smaller commercial banks also do not offer currency exchange. Doesn't matter, still banks. How many of the banking laws apply would depend on the customers, and services offered to these customers. So far you've only excluded currency exchange, which means that pretty much every banking law might still apply. You seem slightly hung up on the digital part. That's not how the law works. You'll need a banking license where you're operating your bank, not where its infrastructure is located. And yes, not meeting the requirements for registering a bank (whether financially, regulatory, or legally) will stop your idea in its tracks. This is one of the cases where "talk to a lawyer" might not be the appropriate response, but "hire a legal team".
At-will employers can fire you for almost any reason or no reason at all, aside from a few protected reasons for termination (defined by things like gender, race, religion, disability, etc.). &quot;Employees who want to work remotely from another country&quot; is not a protected class of individuals, so the company could almost certainly fire you for this with no repercussions whatsoever. Whether they will or not is an different question that's entirely dependent on your specific situation, but in general, US at-will employers have a very wide latitude to &quot;tell you no&quot; by simply firing you. All you can do is ask your manager. If they say no, then the answer is no. They do not require any &quot;grounds&quot; or justification for their decision.