BRIDGING BARRIERS: CONVERSATIONS ACROSS LEGAL CULTURES  

An Oral History Series by Emails to a Young Lawyer
Curated & Presented by Can Yildirim
Interview No. 12

GUEST BIO

 

Learn more about the Bridging Barriers series, read my reflections on the previous interviews, and watch their recordings HERE.

 

 

Introducing Salih Kartal

Twelve interviews into Bridging Barriers, I have noticed something I did not expect when this series began. Every conversation has featured a different legal professional, each with their unique background, path, and area of practice. Yet despite those differences, the interviews have repeatedly returned to strikingly similar themes. My conversation with Salih Kartal felt like a natural continuation and encapsulation of that exploration.

After studying law at Istanbul University and practicing in Turkiye for nearly seven years, primarily in international arbitration, Salih decided to pursue an LL.M. at the Georgetown University Law Center. He identified his main motivation as a curiosity about the common law tradition. That curiosity served as the foundation for an experience that reached far beyond the simple boundaries of tradition. He explored differences in, we found ourselves discussing, how lawyers learn to rethink assumptions they no longer realize they carry.

 

Learning Law or Learning to Think Again?

Salih remarked that legal education goes beyond learning the law; it involves learning a way of thinking. This observation was the highlight of our conversation.

Although every guest has expressed it differently, this idea has repeatedly surfaced throughout these conversations. Some described discovering the Socratic method. Others spoke about legal writing, classroom culture, professional judgment, or advocacy. Yet each story pointed toward the same realization that crossing legal systems ultimately requires retraining the habits of mind through which we understand the law itself.

Salih’s approach, however, introduced an additional nuance that I found particularly compelling. Rather than constantly translating American legal concepts through his existing civil-law framework, he consciously worked to set those assumptions aside. In several of his classes, he described approaching the material almost as though he were learning law from scratch. The value of his previous education had not depreciated. Instead, he had found that the absence of learned instincts allowed him to better understand the logic of a different system, and do so on its own terms.

 

When the Familiar Becomes Unfamiliar

Like other civil-law-trained lawyers, Salih arrived with a basic familiarity with common law. He understood the tradition as a system in which judges make law. However, during a constitutional law class, he heard an American professor say something entirely unexpected:

“If a judge is making law, the judge is making a mistake.”

This simple framing challenged his long-crystallized understanding. Simultaneously, it forced him to reconsider the very way the word “law” carries different meanings across systems.

Salih’s experience illustrates a recurring theme of Bridging Barriers. The greatest differences between legal systems often stem from things far simpler than complex doctrines. They reside in the connotations of words we assume everyone understands in exactly the same way. Learning another legal system, therefore, transcends memorizing new rules and requires one to question familiar definitions.

 

Clarity as Legal Judgment

Another theme that resonated with earlier conversations concerned legal writing. Several previous guests described moving away from long, highly ornamented legal prose toward greater precision and simplicity. Salih observed the same transition from a slightly different perspective.

English, he suggested, encourages economy. Rather than constructing elaborate and page-long sentences, lawyers seek to communicate ideas through shorter, clearer ones. Over time, he adapted to this linguistic suggestion, restructuring his writing and, more fundamentally, the way he organized his thoughts before writing at all. Thus, what initially appeared as a stylistic preference gradually became a habit of reasoning.

 

Becoming Better Lawyers and Better People

As our conversation drew to a close, I asked Salih what advice he would offer someone considering a similar path. He advised arriving with a plan, keeping an open mind, and making time to experience the people and culture around you. Experiencing another country and another culture, he said, helps individuals grow as lawyers and as people. Becoming a better person ultimately makes one a better lawyer.

 

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

When I began preparing Bridging Barriers, I imagined it as a series about lawyers who crossed borders.

Nearly six months of preparation preceded the first interview, followed by almost a year of conversations that gradually became part of Emails to a Young Lawyer. During that time, I expected to learn about different educational systems, different legal professions, and different career paths.

I certainly did. I did not anticipate that the interviews themselves would interact with one another. One guest explained a challenge that another unknowingly answered months later. A story about legal writing connected to another about classroom culture. A discussion of hierarchy illuminated a later conversation about advocacy. Individual experiences gradually became part of a larger conversation that none of the interviewees could have planned together.

Looking back on twelve interviews, I see that this series documents the gradual formation of professional judgment across legal cultures. These conversations have offered their unique perspectives on the meaning of thinking across systems without abandoning one’s intellectual foundations. Each guest has noted that becoming a global lawyer goes beyond collecting jurisdictions, degrees, or professional titles. Salih’s reflections capture that spirit remarkably well.

When the series began, I hoped these conversations would help me understand what it means to study and practice law across borders. Twelve interviews later, I have developed a greater appreciation for the lawyers who remain willing to question their own assumptions every time they encounter a new legal culture.

Looking back, that may be the strongest bridge this series has built.