Practice Management

GCs: Do you really need Big, Clumsy & Myopic in 25 cities worldwide?

By Dan Hull

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 September 2008 in Zurich; the next, in March 2009, will be in Sydney. But smaller teams and configurations of IBLC lawyers (and member accountants) constantly form to work for clients.

Full post as published by What About Clients? on November 09, 2008 (boomark / email).