Breaking down walls

Foreign law firms will develop, not devour, local talent in the Indian legal market, argues David Jacobs, Baker & McKenzie’s Asia Pacific chairman

During the same 1947 summer that India celebrated its independence from Britain, a 46-year-old Chicago lawyer, Russell Baker, left his successful litigation practice with an eye on the world.

In that early post-World War II era, manufacturers in the American heartland had awakened to an explosion of opportunities abroad. Baker had assisted some of them and it dawned on him that hundreds of businesses around Chicago were venturing into challenging jurisdictions abroad without the help of experienced legal counsel. He sought lawyers who were raised, schooled and licensed to practise law in their own countries, and eager to participate in what we now realize was the dawn of globalization. These legal pioneers, he believed, could provide indispensable legal counsel in unfamiliar territories, helping assure his corporate clients’ success in international business ventures.

Baker’s partners decided against his idea for “a practice that didn’t even have a name, a practice that nobody in Chicago had ever heard of … too risky, too new”. Baker & McKenzie, the firm he established, today has nearly 4,000 lawyers in 70 cities across 38 countries who speak more than 65 languages. Of the firm’s 70 offices worldwide only nine are in the US and the majority of the firm’s principals and associates are not US nationals.