Category Archives: Globalization

The year of living dangerously

So there goes 2011, and from a legal marketplace perspective, you could probably call it the year of hanging on. Large law firms hung on in the face of flat-lined or diminishing revenues, in no small part through the wonders of de-equitization. Small law firms hung on despite an expanding sea of legal service providers [...]
Also posted in Big Firms, Competition, Innovation | 5 Comments

Canada’s Big Bang

Earlier this fall, I gave a presentation to a Canadian law society that described the key trends in the current legal marketplace and forecast where they’re likely to lead in future. As part of the presentation, we discussed a series of hypothetical future developments that would require the profession’s regulators to respond. One of them [...]
Also posted in Big Firms | 5 Comments

Mind the dragon

I’ve written fairly extensively about India and its continuing and future impact on the legal services marketplace. I’ve not paid as much attention to China, but that country’s effect on the legal industry in the 21st century will be profound and could happen sooner than is widely expected. This is a brief note to acknowledge [...]
Posted in Globalization | 1 Comment

India: Beyond legal process outsourcing

The symmetry was remarkable. Magic Circle icon Clifford Chance caused major waves in the mainstream legal media this week by announcing plans to cut up to 80 lawyers from its flagship London office, about 10% of the legal professionals there. The move, following layoff notices issued to 20 litigation associates in CC’s New York office [...]
Also posted in Outsourcing | 1 Comment

Globalize your thinking

It’s with some reluctance that I link to The American Lawyer‘s Global 100 rankings (or at least, to the article about the rankings — the actual list is subscriber-only). I have an aversion to anything that roughly equates “law firm success” with “profit per equity partner,” which most of these rankings tend to do, because [...]
Posted in Globalization | Leave a comment

Eversheds: how to set new client standards

I was jazzed a year ago when Eversheds struck a deal with Tyco to become the service and manufacturing multinational’s primary outside counsel, reducing Tyco’s complement of law firms for most legal matters from 250 to 1. Those who doubted the wisdom of the arrangement at the time worried that Tyco would miss out on [...]
Also posted in Big Firms, Innovation | Leave a comment

Pro bono without borders

A press release came my way today from McCarthy Tétrault, announcing that the firm is the first Canadian “Partner Without Borders” of the Quebec division of Avocats Sans Frontieres. [Edit] ASF is an international NGO devoted to providing legal assistance and representation to vulnerable individuals and groups in developing countries or those in crisis. The [...]
Also posted in Purpose, Talent | 2 Comments

Offshore reflections

It’s a few weeks late, but this article about offshore legal services published early last month in The Hindu is worth a read, although it’s not offered on the basis that all its contents should necessarily be taken at face value. It comes across rather as a corporate Q-and-A for SDD Global Solutions, an Indian [...]
Also posted in Billing, Ethics, New Lawyers, Outsourcing | Leave a comment

Law practice in the 21st century

This article was first posted at Slaw on September 29th, 2006. Earlier this month, I visited San Francisco for the first time. I’d long been fascinated by the thought of a city built on a geological time bomb, and walking its streets was quite an experience. Everyone knows there’ll be a massive seismic rupture underneath [...]
Also posted in Competition, Generations, Small Centers | Leave a comment

Moving targets

Mobile lawyering, international trade mechanisms, and Asian outsourcing all revolve around twin forces — technology and globalization — that have reduced the significance of physical distance and national borders for legal practice. The four walls of a lawyer’s office no longer contain a practitioner, and the borders and coastlines of our nation no longer impede [...]
Also posted in Technology | Leave a comment

Search the Archives