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Abstract:
This paper offers a way of thinking about the field of TRIPs interpretation - not so much the record of interpretive practices as the continuing competitive and cooperative efforts to structure interpretation selectively and steer a path through the criss-cross of regulation. Interpretation is not a mechanical task, it depends on who is deciding and the styles and sources of law for deciding.

The paper first lays out features of the law making field, characterises the mix of competitive and cooperative strategies, and asks whether this process of interpretation will ever be closed off. It then tests these propositions against the experience with interpretation in two places - inside the WTO as dispute settlement and outside within bilateral treaty making. Throughout, the experience is illustrated by the interpretations given to pharmaceutical patent protection.

TRIPs, international intellectual property law, WTO, regulation

Abstract:
While economics, politics and even culture are keys to the free trade agreements, legal design is also important. The design of the legal structure involves strategic choices, aimed primarily to promote as much liberalisation as possible, but also, in doing so, to manage or mediate the relationship with the regulatory competence which governments wish to retain. This paper examines the options and traps in working through the key legal components to these services and investment chapters. They will be: the definitions of its scope, the parties' norms and obligations, the listing of commitments or reservations, the allowance for exceptions, the standards which domestic regulation must meet, and the dispute resolution processes.

free trade agreements, Liberalisation, Regulation and Law

Abstract:
This paper examines the disjuncture that has developed in the Australian legal sector between the expectations of the large firm employers and new law graduates. This disjuncture is causing hardship to graduates and undermining versatile skill development in the sector. Under current conditions of entry to the profession, corporate law firm policy largely determines the experience of private practice. Yet the promotion to partner tournament is losing its motivating power as the firms grow to their maximum market size and the new generation of graduates want more flexibility in their jobs and employability across the sector. This disjuncture is being expressed in several ways: indirectly through the pressure on the curriculum and orientation of the public university degree programs, more closely in the arrangements for graduates to obtain the practical legal training for admission to the profession, in the regulation of the private practice traineeships and continuing professional development, finally in the reshaping of the firms themselves with provision for MDPs and corporate legal services. It raises the question whether local regulatory institutions can continue to play a role coordinating a social system of production of legal knowledge and skills training. Will the large firms break free of the local state and professional institutions and enter an independent world of international services? What does the small Australian experience indicate about changes in the profession globally?

expectations of large law firms, new law graduates, public regulation, law firm policies