Legal marketers around the world confront the new economic reality.

• Author: Stickel, Amy I.
• Position: IT'S A SMALL WORLD, AFTER ALL

It may come as little surprise--or comfort--to legal marketers in the United States and Canada, but many of their colleagues around the world are also struggling with decreasing budgets, less work for their attorneys and an atmosphere of uncertainty.

For example, in the United Kingdom, getting named a partner at a major law firm has become extremely difficult in the last year. According to a September report in "Legal Week," new partner promotions are down nearly one-third at the UK's 50 biggest law firms. In 2009, 399 attorneys made partner, compared with 598 in 2008, the Sept. 4 article reported.

The situation in the UK may look very familiar to many on this side of the pond in other regards, too. According to Paul M. Jaffa, managing director of Myddleton Communications Ltd., in London. "The collapse has really been in the corporate (M&A, private equity, high-end funding, etc.) and real estate sides," he says. Specialist areas, such as energy, tax, international, restructurings and insolvencies, have seen an upturn, though. "There has not yet been the anticipated dramatic rise in litigation, despite some large and high-profile cases," says Jaffa.

The Italian market has also been hit hard. "We definitely saw a reduction of budgets starting at the end of last year," says Simone Pasquini, a facilitator at Legal Marketing Italia. "In fact, some international firms have shut down their Italian marketing departments. It is definitely a very extreme approach."

Of course, all markets are local. In some jurisdictions, the bad times weren't quite so bad, and better times are already on the horizon. The Brazilian capital markets were not hit nearly as hard as those in the United States and the UK and are rebounding more quickly, according to Marco Antonio P. Goncalves of Goncalves & Goncalves Marketing Juridico in Rio de Janeiro. "As regularly stated by the media, Brazil was considered one of the last countries to be hit by the crisis and one of the first ones to come out of it," says Goncalves. "The fact is that business for some major Brazilian firms has slowed down during the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009, but has got back on track since then."

And in Australia, law firms have been able to achieve the traditional economic balance of offsetting their struggling practices with busier ones, according to Graham Seldon, managing director of Seldon Gill Consulting. However, many mid-tier firms are doing well at the expense of larger firms. "As...