When we enter markets, it is with a view to the long term. That way we can develop a strong team and offer our people there a career, not just a job.
This approach means we do not have an office in every major city. It is more important that each of our offices provides the same high level of service to our clients, and the same career opportunities to our people.
We still need to operate in markets, right across the world, in which we do not have a physical presence. So for markets where we do not have an office, we have dedicated teams staffed by people with first-hand experience of the relevant areas.
In practice
Changing markets
In some of the smaller markets in Central and Eastern Europe our clients no longer need us to do the volumes of complex and important work that we have done in recent years or that we expect to do in other markets.
This has meant recently we have had to make some difficult decisions in the four smaller markets where we had offices, where we were no longer able to make the commitment to our best people that they had the prospect of becoming partners.
The easy option would have been to pull out of these countries and close the offices. Instead, we worked with the partners in these offices and assisted them in launching a new regional law firm. We plan to support this new firm through a variety of initiatives, from secondments to sharing knowhow, as well as working closely with them in the future on a “best friends” basis.
In response to client needs, we have also launched a new emerging markets group, Emerging Europe, Middle East and North Africa. This group has offices in Dubai, Moscow and Warsaw. In each of the other key markets where our clients are doing business, clients are looked after by teams of lawyers on “virtual desks”.