The new multi-polar world--what it means for law firm marketing.

• Author: Dance, E. Leigh

For years, international law firms have heard the message "think global, act local. "Vast legal, economic, political and cultural differences from one country to the next can dramatically alter the results of your firm's business development initiatives. Though we start with the foundation of a "global" strategy for the firm and its client, we must tailor tactics to the local market.

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Up until about two years ago, "global" for most law firms meant the world's major financial centers: New York, London, Frankfurt, Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Now in 2009, "global" is not so easily defined. Though the economy has slowed things, business growth prospects tend to be far stronger in new, emerging or recently emerged markets rather than the mature markets of the world's traditional financial centers. We constantly hear about how companies are growing more profitably beyond home turf. Markets of great commercial interest for many of our most valued clients are places you may have never heard of. Take, for example, Addis Ababa: population 2.7 million; Bangalore: 5.3 million; Dhaka: 12.3 million; Hangzhou: 6.8 million; Islamabad: 4.5 million; Karachi: 12.8 million; Mumbai: 14 million; Nairobi: 3.1 million; Qingdao: 7.6 million.

You cannot be an expert everywhere, but it is important to know where key emerging markets are and what role they may play in your clients' businesses. Global law firms today are often not defined by a major headquarters and numerous local offices. More often, global law firm offices focus on market opportunities in their immediate area, their region and across disparate regions. "Global" has become too general and thus superficial. Likewise, the tailoring required for truly "local" marketing everywhere would be so labor intensive and costly as to make business unprofitable. A multi-polar focus fits the business world today, an intricate combination of global and local.

When interviewing David Syed, senior partner for Europe at Orrick, for the book "Bright Ideas: Insights from Legal Luminaries Worldwide," he said a "whole range of things are happening simultaneously in places like China, Silicon Valley and the Middle East, causing these markets to be much more prominent in world markets because of the value that is being created there. As a result, we are seeing the emergence of a much more multi-polar world ... There has been a paradigm shift in the way we have to structure and organize to serve the...