Doing Business Abroad.

• Author: Spendlove, Gretta
• Position: Review

A great book on a great topic, "The Lexus and the Olive Tree," by Thomas Friedman, discusses globalization and its impact on countries, individuals and businesses. Friedman's thesis is that the dominant post-Gold War influence on the world will be "the degree and intensity with which the world is being tied together into a single, global marketplace and village."

My first experience representing a company doing business abroad involved selling a dinosaur to a Japanese museum. I quickly realized that there were not only legal, but cultural issues involved. Not only did we have to decide what law to apply (Japan's? New York's? Utah's?), but we had to make the contract short enough so that it wouldn't offend the Japanese buyer. While American lawyers feel painfully exposed, if not naked, when a multimillion dollar deal does not contain at least 20 pages, Japanese businessmen are used to doing deals on a handshake or with a short letter agreement.

Doing business abroad can take many forms. You may sell products to a foreign country. You may import products or components of products from abroad. You may provide services to foreign companies. You may have a foreign person or company as a partner. You may employ foreign workers.

Here are a few issues to consider when doing business abroad:

E-commerce transactions may be international without your specifically intending to do business abroad. ("How much does it cost to mall the Supergizmo advertised on your website to Zimbabwe?") Websites can, of course, be accessed from anywhere in the world. America and the English language are dominant in e-commerce with almost 80 percent of websites in English, although fewer than one in 10 people worldwide speak the language.

However, regardless of where the seller is, the purchaser may be anywhere in the world. If you sell a product or service over the Internet, you may well have international customers. Properly including mailing costs, form of payment, and "boilerplate terms," such as what law governs and where suit can be brought, could be especially important if you have international sales. Shipments of goods bought over the Internet may be subject to U.S. and foreign import/export regulations.

Decide which law will apply and where disputes will be settled. ("How do I collect a debt in a Hong Kong court?") Increasingly, business laws of the federal United States and its individual states are becoming standardized. But there are still differences between...