(Part of our participation in the Association of Legal Administrators Educational Conference 2008 in Seattle)

Foreign firms investing in the US will someday bring their firms with them - foreign firms who need US presence and will challenge US firms for talent, clients.

Looking at locations where there is a lot of international trade exposure, but also where that exposure is changing at a more rapid rate!

Iii strategy - Mumbai, dubai, shanghai. “Nothing against it,” but there is a bigger picture

Latin America has as much trade activity as Europe. Most of that is Mexico, followed by Brazil & Argentina.

More trade in Europe than in Asia. Last year American businesses invested more into Europe than SWF and individual foreign investors from middle east invested in US.

Demographics - China is an aging population that will have a declining work population within the next 10-20 years. India is looking to grow working population in the course of next few decades.

Latin America - growing investment in foreign firms, and declining volume in acquiring (though increase dollar values). There is no clear leader in the Latin American space in terms of legal representation, so there may be an open operation there.

Cross border revenue growing faster than domestic revenue. Almost no firms have in-house capacity to handle cross-border issues.

Two dimensions for competitive landscape - value perception vs size

Clementi law in the UK - will allow foreign equity investment in UK firms.

Firms starting to go public in Australia, will be seeing this in the US?

Office based profitability can drive a wedge to prevent acting as a global firm.