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Leaders in Legal Business

Future: International Law Firms Markus Hartung1

Bucerius Center on the Legal Profession
Director

The Future of Legal Business — International Law Firms

What does John Doe, managing partner of a typical international law firm headquartered in London,
think at the moment? His partners have asked him to come up with a three-year plan to strengthen the firm’s
position in its home market and internationally. How to start? Times are tough, clients please themselves
by putting pressure on costs, demand is stagnating, income growth is hardly recognizable, and profits are
coming under pressure. Should he read any of these smart books or articles dealing with development of
legal markets?

Well, looking at his bookshelf leads to immediate depression: Richard Susskind’s “The End of
Lawyers?” Larry Ribstein’s “The Death of Big Law,” Bruce MacEwen’s “Growth is Dead,” Mitch
Kowalski’s “Avoiding Extinction,” Steven Harper’s “The Lawyer Bubble,” Stephen Mayson’s “Law Firm
Partnership — The Grand Delusion,” Laura Empson’s “Partnerships — Will They Survive?” …

What do these books and articles tell him? All of these academics with their catchy book titles are
not entirely helpful. Who has the crystal ball? Ah, The Lawyer magazine, part of the English legal press,
has interviewed many managing partners who should know what they are talking about, but what is this?
The crystal ball contains a dark and gloomy smoky premonition: The Magic Circle, the colloquial term for
the U.K.’s leading law firms, is predicted to disappear within the next decade. This doesn’t irritate our John
Doe, as his firm does not belong to this distinguished
group of firms anyway. David Morley, A&O’s senior
partner claims “Reinvent or disappear”? What does
that mean? And Tom Wood of Barclays, with whom
John spoke a couple of days ago about the firm’s
financial status, foretold a failure of “a handful of
firms” — does Tom know more about John’s firm
than he said in this meeting? There seems to be only
one positive statement, which came from Rainer
Loges, managing partner of Gleiss Lutz, a German
premium full-service firm; Loges took the view that
there will not be any drastic changes in the top end of
the market, but that is overseas, Germany has always
been different, hence this does not help.

Who has the answer to today’s questions? To know the right questions would be a good start. How
come so many firms focus (and narrow) their practice and try to become more profitable, while other firms,
at the same time, go in exactly the opposite direction, growing bigger and bigger until they are global
entities with some 1,000 partners! Can you imagine what a partners’ meeting looks like?

1 Markus Hartung is a lawyer and mediator. In 1999, he was elected as managing partner of Oppenhoff & Rädler, the first full-time managing partner in
Germany. During his tenure, he oversaw the merger with Linklaters and served as the managing partner of Linklaters in Germany from 2001-07 and as
member of the Global Executive Committee of Linklaters. He is a member of the German Bar Association (DAV) and chairs the Committee on Professional
Regulation.

As a lawyer he focuses on conflict management, regulatory issues and professional indemnity issues. In addition, he advises law firms in strategy and
management questions and coaches partners in management functions.

At the CLP, Markus Hartung is responsible for the conception of educational and continuing education programs for legal professionals. His expertise in
the framework of the CLP lies in market development and trends, management, and strategic leadership as well as corporate governance of societies. Markus
Hartung holds regular public lectures on these topics.

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