World tour: a whirlwind excursion through the global legal marketing scene reveals a wide array of approaches to the business of developing business. Or does it?

• Author: Calve, Joe

When it comes to the business of developing business, it doesn't seem to matter much where a firm hangs its hat. Except, that is, when it does. It's clear that cultural considerations play a powerful role in shaping approaches to business development among law firms around the world. Except, that is, when they don't. And there is plenty of common ground across borders when it comes to the role law firm business developers and marketing professionals are called upon to play Except, that is, when there isn't.

That about sums up the all-over-the-map insights to be drawn from our quick tour of law firm marketing and business development outside the United States. The consistency of the inconsistency is, well, breathtaking

Except, that is, when it's not.

We decided with this issue to pursue a follow-up to our piece last year, "World Class" [Strategies, January-February 2011], which examined attitudes and approaches among legal marketers in the United States Why not, we thought, take a quick excursion outside territorial waters, cast our net and pull in some voices less frequently heard in Strategies? (And, frankly, we needed a change of scene.)

The idea was to explore commonalities and differences among law firm marketers and business developers working in various corners of the globe Were there lessons to be drawn? Best practices to be pilfered? Snake pits to be sidestepped? Just where are we--those of us based in the United States--on the continuum that stretches from the Magic Circle to Moscow, from Canada to Korea, from Chattanooga to China?

Talk about a fool's errand. Peter Zeughauser, the ever-insightful consultant to Big Law from Newport Beach, Calif., called us out the moment we told him what we were up to.

"You're taking on a huge topic here," he said, as if lecturing a procrastination-prone teen fishing for a topic for a term paper due tomorrow. "Cultural differences vastly affect how firms market and how business is...