Twenty-First Century Legal Practice: The Art of Solving International Business Problems in a Client-Led World

• Author: David A. Steiger
• Pages: 1-22

Lawyers and nonlawyers alike have come to see that the business of law is in

a remarkable, perhaps historic state of ux today. What most purchasers of

legal services understand—but unfortunately fewer attorneys have yet taken

to heart—is that the upheaval going on is a reection of the fact that the

twentieth-century model of legal practice has been judged to serve lawyers

much better than their clients. And clients who are facing an unprecedented

scope of legal and business challenges have in the last decade collectively

concluded they can no longer accept their counsel’s halting half steps toward

adjustment to a changing and challenging world. Instead, businesses have

shed their historically passive role in the attorney-client relationship and

fundamentally redened the provision of legal services in a way that allows

them to extract maximum value at minimum cost. To put it bluntly, law-

yers better get used to the idea that they are now subject to the same rules

of procurement as any other vendor. In a globalizing world, that means

more and more attorneys are being challenged to develop a global practice,

because that is what clients increasingly need and will demand.

1

Chapter 1

Twenty-First Century Legal

Practice: The Art of Solving

International Business Problems

in a Client-Led World

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Well, How Did We Get Here?

At the dawn of the new millennium, the American legal profession was

divided, as it had seemingly always been, into two parts: in-house and

outside counsel who largely specialized in international transactions or

cross-border litigation, and everyone else. Many lawyers in this second

group were so focused on the day-to-day business of running their practices

that the seismic shifts in the way their clients’ business was being conducted

was largely lost on them. Sure, they understood that manufactured goods

were being imported from China in record numbers, or that if they called

an information technology (IT) help desk or a customer service line, they

were just as likely to be talking to someone in India as someone in Indiana.

They just did not see how their clients’ national, regional, or local foot-

print—and hence their own practice—was affected by any of that.

These lawyers would perhaps have told you that their clients were com-

panies that never had any overseas presence. They might have been doing all

of the legal work of a third-generation family business, a small or medium-

sized manufacturing concern, or a closely held company providing services

to a discrete set of communities. Their clients might have sought state

or federal tax advice, management of their litigation, or help with much

dreaded Sarbanes-Oxley compliance issues. The one thing these attorneys

were condent of, though, was that their clients would never be global and

simply would not want or need legal advice touching on international issues.

So, they concluded, adapting a legal practice like theirs to the needs of the

global economy was wholly unnecessary.

As it happened, however, even a decade ago, the businesspeople and

in-house legal staff with whom these attorneys interacted were already

becoming aware of the coalescence of a global marketplace that was reach-

ing into virtually every industry. This market was engaging not just Fortune

1000 leviathans with long-established cross-border presences, but small

and medium-sized product and service suppliers as well. Globalization had

already moved far beyond the production of electronics, steel, and source

code, and even beyond the provision of back ofce services. In fact, it had

already spread to sophisticated research and development functions, nan-

cial analysis, processing of insurance claims, and preparation of architectural

CHAPTER 12

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