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August 25, 2007
Redux: GCs: Do you really need Big, Clumsy & Unresponsive in 50 cities worldwide?
If you are a hiring in-house counsel working for a great company doing business everywhere, is there any reason to keep engaging your US or UK-based law firm that expanded in the past few years all over the globe like a spastic hamburger franchise? When those firms expanded internationally, they diluted their talent and "gene" pool, and their value to your company, and you know it. They acquired lawyers and law firms in the US and abroad they wouldn't have looked at twice 15 years ago. Our firm's international group, the IBLC, is a clearinghouse of high-end corporate law talent in smaller firms all over the world.
Hull McGuire PC has been busy helping mold this group for 9 years. We know each other well, see each other often, and work together regularly. (Our last full meeting was in March 2007 in Austria. We meet again in Portugal in early October. Smaller teams constantly form and meet and work for clients more frequently.) There are IBLC members in over 70 cities worldwide. Forty firms are particularly active. Member firms range between 5 and 130 lawyers, all of whom who could work at any mega-firm now or of yester year--and so they charge accordingly. Not cheap. The firms compete on service, not price. There are other tightly-knit international groups, perhaps as many as 400; the IBLC is one of several that works.
Posted by Holden Oliver at August 25, 2007 12:24 PM