Horacio Bernardes Neto

 Horacio Bernardes Neto, President, International Bar Association

Introducing the history of the International Bar Association (IBA), Horacio said that the IBA included only 34 lawyers associations when it was founded in New York in 1947. After 70 years of development, it has now grown into a large organization consisting of over 80,000 lawyer members from top law firms worldwide and 190 lawyers associations from more than 170 countries.

He noted that he has focused on improving lawyers' well-beings since becoming IBA's president, and the association is scheduled to hold two conferences on arbitration and the Belt and Road Initiative respectively in Beijing and Shanghai next year, which will be of significance to lawyers around the world.

He truly appreciated the theme of the Global Lawyers Conference, namely, Scientific &Technological Progress and Legal Services, saying that the topic has caught the attention of global law societies.

He also mentioned that more and more Chinese lawyers and law firms have become IBA's members and are playing an active role in the association's special committees on corporate law, M&A law and technological law.