This week in the Law School Insider I have the pleasure of bringing you Ryan Barshop, an attorney practicing law in the Philippines, but his practice has allowed him to open firms in multiple countries and he has learned much in his first six years in practice.
In his practice he has been doing a lot of work with consulates and in the Philippines he works closely with the U.S. Consulate. Ryan Barshop mentioned that he was bitten by the travel bug starting when he was 13. In college he was able to work in rural West Africa in 2000 and was engaging in dialogues in the Middle East. In 2003 he became a Peace Corp volunteer in the Philippines and it was there that he met his wife and decided to apply to Cooley Law School. Prior to starting law school Ryan Barshop's wife was finding that her VISA was taking longer than expected so a decision was made that she would stay in the Philippines and Ryan Barshop found that he would continue to make the flights to the Philippines on term breaks to visit his wife.
Ryan Barshop also made the decision to do an externship on the island of Guam too. As he was graduating law school, he found that he was in a tough economy and living in Korea. He did research and found that he could work in Immigration Law abroad by working with the Consulates. He found much of the information that allowed him to start his professional career through joining and exploring the professional association known as the American Immigration Lawyers Association. He now is known as an expert in consular processing in Manila.
Ryan Barshop mentioned that one of the things that made his transition into his foreign externship earlier was that he was surround by graduates from Cooley Law School as there are many that live and practice there. As he transitioned into his professional practice, he took what he learned from his externship and was able to establish himself as the man on the ground in Manila and now layers from around the world come to him with questions pertaining to the U.S. Consulate in the Philippines.
If you are interested in international law. Ryan Barshop states that you have to give up a lot to work in international law. You also have to decide what you want to do and where you want to live and work. Ryan Barshop did mention that even though he does give a lot of himself to his career and profession he gets a lot back too.
He said that one of the downsides to working in a foreign country is that you are working with different cultures and dealing with laws that are very different than those found in the United States. You may even be working in a country that offers no reciprocity and does not recognize your law license as valid in their country. If that is the case you have to understand how you can still get work done locally, either through working with local attorneys or some other stealth fashion to be able to still get work accomplished.
As mentioned earlier, Ryan Barshop runs his law practice in multiple countries, has multiple employees and has experienced the stress and challenges of dealing with the day-to-day issues that a lawyer faces. Because of experiencing this personally, Ryan Barshop recently created a new service to help lawyers and law firms to better manage this for themselves and their firms. He created Legalatty, a company that is considered a LPO or legal process outsourcing. The company offers what Ryan Barshop states is PTMS or practice task management service. The system allows you to act more like a lawyer and less like an administrator and allows you to not have to micro-manage your staff to the extent that many lawyers now do.
If you want more information about Legalatty you can visit the company website or email Ryan directly.
Did you like this interview? Do you have a question for Ryan Barshop? Leave a comment below to let me know!
Are you a practicing lawyer? A law student? Would you like to be a guest on an upcoming episode of the Law School Insider? Send me an email at lawschoolinsider@cooley.edu