Via FindLaw: “Highlights

• What is required by clients is instant access to information and established relationships everywhere on earth. If law firms cannot quickly provide the information, other professions will.
• The traditional approach to developing a practice is individual networking with other lawyers or members of other professions. Attorneys make as many contacts as possible. But a system based solely on contacts is inefficient because it is purely ad hoc. Who you sit next to at lunch becomes a contact. It may take a lot of lunches and dinners to have a comprehensive list of contacts in over 100 jurisdictions.
• The political and socio-economic changes which have swept the business world necessitate a rethinking of the legal services distribution system. Firms must think beyond the individual attorney and firm levels, as well as beyond specific regions of the world like North America and Europe. Their ad hoc and chance relationships and short-term planning may have been adequate in decades past, but are no longer so in a borderless world.”