A third of VF’s revenue comes from international sales, according to Corp. Counsel, July 2012 at 38, and five members of its 18-person legal department are stationed outside the United States.” VF Corp. is the world’s largest apparel and footwear company. It makes sense that a company that does business and sells shoes everywhere should have the same proportion of its lawyers serving internationally (really, “boots on the ground”).
This blog refers often to the geographic scattering of law department offices and the likely trend in this direction (See my post of Jan. 16, 2009: physically decentralized law departments with 13 references.). The term “footprint” figures notably in these references (See my post of June 20, 2008: geographically dispersed lawyers and a tool to help them reach each other; Jan. 8, 2009: location of in-house counsel will eventually match the global footprint of a company; Dec. 13, 2009: InBev lawyers where the business is; March 2, 2010: 3M and dispersion of its lawyers; Aug. 9, 2011: international footprint of Cargill lawyers; Oct. 19, 2011: management tools needed as law departments disperse; and April 16, 2012: John Deere and its Asian presence.).