Walker Clark
Worldview Archives
Law Firms Without Borders: Challenging Trends in Cross-Border Legal Services
Although law firms today face a seemingly vast array of strategic, operational, and management challenges arising from the globalization of the legal services industry, there are at least five emerging trends that characterize law firms that are successfully building profitable cross-border and multinational practices, even when based in only one office or country.
This paper, presented at the 2022 Annual Conference of the American Bar Association International Law Section, on 29 April 2022, describes these five trends, based on observations and research by the author and other Walker Clark consultants in law firms over the past twenty years.
The Law Firm of the Future: “Anytime, Anywhere” Service
One defining characteristic of the successful law firm of the future is already visible in many of the most successful law firms today.
The successful law firm of the future will be able to deliver a high degree of responsiveness and service quality anytime and anywhere the client needs legal services.
Serving the Foreign Client
As cross-border and global business issues become more common, many small, previously locally-focused, law firms now face, for the first time, the challenges and opportunities of acting for foreign clients.
Even law firms that already do cross-border legal work encounter new and different expectations from new clients from the other side of the world, where local customs and practice may be profoundly different from the firm's previous experience with clients from neighboring countries or one of the major business centers.
