Lawyers Dealing with Everyday Life Ethics in Corporate Legal Firms in Cabo Verde and Mozambique: Colonial Continuities, Resistance, and Change

The development of law firms in Cabo Verde and Mozambique dedicated to corporate and international projects aligns with the rapid expansion of globalized financial markets. Portuguese law firms have been using different channels and instruments – legal, economic, political, and cultural cooperation- to enter and shape these markets. One of the forms used is the training of local practitioners and the establishment of partnerships ensuring a strategy of economic and political influence that can be described as postmodern colonialism (Silbey, 1996).

Special attention should be taken at a micro-level focusing on the lawyers’ practices and perceptions of ethics and professionalism.

What happens to lawyers who study in the Global North and work in the Global South? Having studied Law in the former colonizer country and acting professionally in their home country impacts their moral reasoning and, if so, how do ethical codes and moral commitment evolve? What is the impact of educational and professional socialization on their activity? How do they think about it? Do they reflect on it?

To answer these questions, we conducted fieldwork in Mozambique and Cabo Verde and interviewed thirteen lawyers selected from a mixed sample of Portuguese lawyers working in another jurisdiction CV and MZ: Mozambican and Cape-Verdean lawyers who studied in Portugal and Europe and practice law in their home country in a firm with a partnership or cooperation agreement; and Mozambican lawyers who studied in their home country and practice law in a firm with a partnership or cooperation agreement with a Portuguese law firm.

Results show that ethical compliance with local populations grows with physical proximity and living locally. Nevertheless, each lawyer is involved, simultaneously, in many projects and transactions making them unaware of the outcome of what can be sustained as a strategy for dealing with professional ethics.