Over time, the geographic distribution of in-house lawyers will match the sources of revenue of global companies

An item in the ACC Docket, March 2012 at asian briefings 1, notes that the Asian region of Deere & Company’s law department has grown from two to 20 legal department employees in the past five years. The lawyers for that global company are increasingly placed to match the footprint of the company’s revenue. For the very largest companies in the world, the ones that do business all over, their law department locations and numbers of lawyers at them will eventually line up with where they do the most business.

The exception will be the global specialists, such as securities lawyers and corporate governance specialists, as well as the heads of litigation and intellectual property. They may cluster where the preponderance of senior executives sit – but then again as executives disperse global legal specialists too might distribute geographically and the department as a whole will cover the map.