Editor’s letter

I thought a little trip down memory lane this month. Remember the board game Risk? One game of this childhood favourite could last for days – leaving once-loved family members estranged for a similar duration of time.

It’s the one with the different coloured continents, split into 42 territories. Each player has an army composed of infantry, cavalry and artillery, and the stated aim is to “conquer the world” by waging ferocious Napoleonic military campaigns. The winner is the person who eventually captures all the territories. Indeed (a little bit of trivia here), according to website Wikipedia the game was originally released in France as La Conquête du Monde (The Conquest of the World).

Now, I don’t know whether recent world events make it seem slightly tasteless to engage in a spot of Sunday evening warmongering these days, but I certainly hadn’t seen a box for a while – until recently that is. And I was (of course!) struck by parallels with the increasing internationalisation of law firms.

Not that I’m suggesting any one firm would want to wipe out its rivals entirely, you understand! Nevertheless, targeted lateral hires of ever-larger teams; competing for the most profitable clients; the drive
to establish a foothold – or ‘plant a flag’ – in new jurisdictions; and forging new forms of alliances, all show the larger firms striving to ‘up their game’ in a bid for something akin to international domination. It is the profession after all – not just me – that refers repeatedly to a ‘war’ for talent.

Greater globalisation means an increase in competition among countries and companies alike. The challenge posed by the economic booms underway in China and India, for instance, has been widely assessed and analysed for years, and Gordon Brown recently made his first trip to both nations as prime minister.

Naturally stressing economic cooperation rather than competition in the rhetoric, Brown spoke of Britain expanding its “comprehensive strategic partnership” with China, telling premier Wen Jiabao he eventually wanted us “to be the number one destination of choice for Chinese business”. By 2010 Brown aims to up the value of trade between the two countries to ₤30bn – an increase of 50 per cent on 2006. “Others see globalisation as a risk. I see the rise of China
and the reality of globalisation not as a threat but as an opportunity,” he insisted.

Among a number of business leaders also on the tour were Clifford Chance senior partner Stuart Popham, representing the UK legal profession. He joined in meetings with key players from the business community to “open the way to further cooperation between India and China with the UK”, the firm said.

In India, however, Brown explicitly referred to Asia’s economic boom as “the biggest shift in the balance of economic power in the world in two centuries”. Global institutions needed reforming to reflect this, he explained; officially backing India’s bid for a place on an expanded UN Security Council. This was essential in a world of “200 states, an emerging single marketplace, unprecedented individual autonomy, and the increasing power of informal networks”. Even with international cooperation, if recession does rear its ugly head, there are clearly challenging times ahead.

In this issue of Managing Partner we are focusing on firms’ approaches to risk management, with a lead feature on the types of training programmes run to prevent potentially costly errors. It is a timely subject following the resignation, last month, of Berwin Leighton Paisner real-estate partner Vinay Veneik.

The entry for Risk on Wikipedia states that the game “ignores realistic limitations such as the vast size of the world, and the logistics of long campaigns”, so it is here that the comparison sadly breaks down. It is such long campaigns, whether in warfare or business, that amount to strategy. Indeed, I would say risk management is almost synonymous with strategy. Whether concerned with internal compliance or global expansion; talent or technology, the right approach to risk is the foundation of good business sense – and future success.

Richard Brent

Editor

Features

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