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July 31, 2009
GCs: Do you really need Big, Clumsy & Myopic in 25 cities worldwide?
Managing Partner, remote European branch office, BCM firm (photo: 20th Century Fox).
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?
Sure, some branch offices are better than others, but... If you are in-house counsel working for a great company, and 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 International Business Law Consortium (IBLC), is an alliance of higher-end corporate law firms all over the world, including 20 US members. Hull McGuire PC has been busy helping mold this group for 10 years. We know each other well, see each other often, and work together regularly. Our last full meeting was in March 2009 in Australia; the next, in October 2009, will be in northern Italy. But smaller teams and configurations of IBLC lawyers (and member accountants) constantly form to work for clients.
There are IBLC members in 100 cities worldwide. Forty firms are particularly active. Member firms range between 5 and 250 lawyers, all of whom who could work at any mega-firm now or of yesteryear--and so they charge accordingly. Not cheap. Most firms compete on service, not price. Don't look for "deals"--what's offered is value. There are other international groups, perhaps as many as 400; the IBLC is one that works.
(from several past WAC? posts beginning in 2006)
Posted by JD Hull at July 31, 2009 10:59 PM
Comments
My parents are from Kazakhstan so that makes me Kazakhstan in blood but in papers I am American.
Posted by: Dennis Stadnivok at November 2, 2009 09:43 AM