Cultural ties matter in business because they lower transaction costs. Tribal loyalty fosters trust. Cultural affinity supercharges communication. Reading a contract is useful, but you also need to be able to read people.

Even as free trade and electronic communications bring the world closer together, kinship still counts. Indians in Silicon Valley team up with other Indians; Chinese-Americans do business with Taiwan and Shanghai.

One of the most vibrant cultural networks is also one of the oldest: the Sinosphere. China’s growing might is reinforced by its links with the overseas Chinese. Some 70m ethnic Chinese live outside mainland China. Some are descended from those who moved abroad during China’s imperial expansion from the 12th to the 15th centuries, settling in what are now Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Myanmar. More recently, many fled to escape the horrors of Maoism, or to seek a better life in America or another rich country. Together they connect China to every corner of the world.

Graphic: Brett Ryder/The Economist

South Africa failed in its bid to secure control of the African Union’s top decision-making body, setting back its plan for the continental organization to play a more forceful role in global politics.

South African Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma didn’t win enough support in [Monday's] election in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for head of the AU Commission. The incumbent, Jean Ping, who failed to secure two-thirds of the vote to win a second term, will remain in the position until the next AU summit in June, his spokesman, Noureddine Mezni, said.

It’s “embarrassing for South Africa that it has not been able to carry a majority,” Daniel Silke, an independent political analyst who has advised Telkom South Africa Ltd. (TKG) and Sanlam Ltd. (SLM), said in a phone interview from Cape Town. “It clearly shows South Africa will have to do some targeted lobbying in the run-up to any future elections.”

When I want to read a good book, I write one.

--Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

The Tyrolean Mrs. Oliver can fix anything.

If you are truly service-driven for corporate clients, you live it, breathe it, get it. And all your employees do. It's not a ruse you lay on clients to get new work through the door because you need a new one-night stand to make ends meet, or because it sounds good (i.e., you and yours are could care less about clients, and are in fact the "Eddie Haskells" of client service; yet "client service" must be in your promotional materials and it's cool these days to make even specious noises about it). Instead, you know that "doing the work is marketing". For you, keeping good clients is a passion, preoccupation, a religion. It's not just for show.

Here's an idea for lawyers who are serious about service:

In many business litigations your firm has opportunities to isolate and bring to the client's attention "areas for improvement" highlighted in litigation. Your trial lawyers make mental notes about how lawsuits either arise or are made complicated and expensive by conditions, procedures or documents which need corrective action at the client's shop.

You get the idea.

So early on in the engagement, inform your general counsel or client rep about the problem or imperfection, and tell her that other departments in your law firm would be glad to help outline the problem in detail and/or solve it. If the client doesn't need or want your help to fix the problem, fine. The point is that you are looking out for your client in the long-term--in overall operational areas of its business--and your firm cares enough to say something and offer to help.

Everybody wins when you help clients address systemic issues presented by litigation. No insincere gimmicks here: just alert and useful lawyering as your real marketing tool.

(from past posts)

The Betty Boop, Niewezijds Kolk.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

--Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canada's national interest makes the $5.5 billion pipeline [a non-American one now seriously being discussed in Canada] essential. He was "profoundly disappointed" that U.S. President Barack Obama rejected the Texas Keystone XL option but also spoke of the need to diversify Canada's oil industry. Ninety-seven percent of Canadian oil exports now go to the U.S.

"I think what's happened around the Keystone is a wake-up call, the degree to which we are dependent or possibly held hostage to decisions in the United States, and especially decisions that may be made for very bad political reasons," he told Canadian TV.

Alberta has the world's third-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela: more than 170 billion barrels. Daily production of 1.5 million barrels from the oil sands is expected to increase to 3.7 million in 2025, which the oil industry sees as a pressing reason to build the pipelines.

Meanwhile, China's growing economy is hungry for Canadian oil. Chinese state-owned companies have invested more than $16 billion in Canadian energy in the past two years, state-controlled Sinopec has a stake in the pipeline, and if it is built, Chinese investment in Alberta oil sands is sure to boom.

Great gifts, persistence and drive are hard to beat. If you don't know who Charlotte Rampling, do find out. Ah, Charlotte. You made up for many of the rest of us. You started with much--so you worked even harder. Into The Pantheon, Enduring One. "Still smoldering" after thirty plus years in three languages. Even Paul Newman was blown away. We're not worthy. Please stick around and help for another thirty years.

Apud Monasterium de Scone positus est lapis pergrandis in ecclesia Dei, juxta manum altare, concavus quidam ad modum rotundae cathedreaie confectus, in quo future reges loco quasi coronatis.

--14th century English cleric Walter Hemingford

An oblong block of red sandstone known as The Stone of Scone (or Scottish coronation stone) was already ancient and storied when Edward I "captured it" in 1296 as a spoils of war and took it to Westminster Abbey. There it was fitted into a wooden chair, known as King Edward's Chair. Most subsequent English sovereigns have been crowned on it.

The combative and opinionated Edward, who spent much of his reign taming and subjugating the Scots, and hated them, once referred to the Stone as "a turd".

Seven hundred years after Edward lifted the Stone from the Scots, on July 3, 1996, the British House of Commons finally ordered that the Stone would be returned. It was handed over to Scotland in November of that year at the England-Scotland border and taken to Edinburgh Castle. It will remain in Scotland except for future coronations at Westminster Abbey in London.

Injured 2 weeks ago, Rafael Nadal celebrates beating Roger Federer yesterday in the Australian Open semifinal in Melbourne. (Photo: Daniel Munoz/Reuters)

Anonymous comments are often the bane of every community manager’s existence. Even the website editorial staffs for major newspapers - perhaps the biggest perpetrators of allowing anonymity online - hate the fact random people can leave random anything on their websites.

Gannett, one of the largest publishers of newspapers and media properties in the world, introduced article comments in 2006 and, according to social media director Jodi Gersh, the company’s dismay with comments has grown. Now the media giant is pushing toward holding commentors accountable for their words.

With thanks to Kevin Driscoll (not pictured above).

For an experienced client, the cost of the lawsuit is part of the "victory" analysis. So is closure--or just getting it over with.

In America, the state and federal trial courts of record--rather than arbitration panels or mediation (which we Americans group together under the heading Alternative Dispute Resolution, or "ADR")--are still the "poison of choice" to resolve commercial disputes. That is likely to be true for a long time.

True, also, that our courts in the U.S. give even civil litigants (a) due process rights, (b) pre-trial access to the discovery of evidence, and (c) opportunities to present evidence at trial--each on a scale the world has never known before. While that "experience" is often tainted with inefficiencies and waste, it is at least predictable. Litigants generally accept the risks of what can happen to them--through flukes, brilliance, or the triumph of moral order in the universe--in American courts.

However, the "bad news" here is also considerable--and, of course, predictable. Business litigation in the courts is (a) extremely expensive, (b) highly disruptive to clients reps and witnesses, many of whom are managers or workers, and (c) very lengthy from start to finish. Even the "winning" client generally loses--and loses a lot in terms of resources and time.

It's simply because the cases you defend in struggling economic times can be more marginal from a merits standpoint. And that's exactly where ADR can really help. Even if you don't love ADR in America, or you were trained for full-blown trials.

Say you've just been handed a case to defend in an American court that is poorly-grounded, weak or otherwise insubstantial. A weak employment discrimination or wrongful discharge action (I call it the the "un-classy firing" suit). Or a flimsy business case dressed up as an unfair competition or infringement action (the "it's-weak-but-let's-see-what-happens" suit). Down-on-their-luck David & Son, with hungry counsel, v. Flatfooted Goliath, Inc., your client and a deep pocket.

The stars seem to be aligned in Goliath's favor.

Not only does your client Goliath have more resources, and the case filed against it is transparently contrived and weak, you are assigned to a real judge. Your firm is before a scholarly, honest, sane jurist with people sense, and loved by all. Your research suggests that the judge is business-savvy in rulings, and takes a dim view of iffy cases.

So you think you will win your case on a dispositive motion (and you do, eventually). You are right on the merits--and any law professor in the U.S. would agree with you. The "case" your long-time GC just handed you is silly, right? And a piece of cake. A cinch. Almost beneath you, you tell yourself. An "easy win", right?

Well, think again, Skippy.

Your GC couldn't have hired you to do anything more difficult. "Winning" just took on a new and more complicated meaning. Because now--especially if you were just handed a defense counsel's dream and stone "winner" of a case--you will have to work harder, and be smarter, than if you were defending a good faith or meritorious suit in which your client had the lion's share of bad facts.

The trick now is to win cheap*. An easy-to-win business suit handled by the most efficient defense counsel on earth can have defense fees and costs well over $100,000, even with minimal or no discovery. You really think that your GC or client rep will be happy the day you tell him or her about your great win on all counts based on your brilliant Rule 12(b)(6) or Rule 56 motion?

Don't bet on it. For the experienced client, the cost of the lawsuit is part of the "victory" analysis. So is "closure"--or just getting it over with. In a down American economy, litigation tends to increase. More suits are filed. And in my view clients and their plaintiff's lawyers file more questionable suits, i.e., ranging from Rule 11 violations and frivolous to iffy and wasteful. Employee and business nuisance cases are a big chunk of those filings.

A good arbitration panel or mediator will cut to the quality of the suit and its likelihood of success quicker than even the best American judges, who often feel obligated to give bad and iffy cases a wide berth. And good judges understand the problems of the business community and the utility of arbitration and mediation. Get jurists on your side in your attempt to drive iffy cases into ADR.

*Better to have "no lawsuit" than a great case or defense.