As the amount of cross-border legal work continues to skyrocket, US-based law firms must streamline and scale their global legal work if they wish to keep their share of this lucrative market.
That’s according to Wolters Kluwer CT Corporation experts, sharing their insights in a new episode of CT Expert Insights, a recently launched podcast series created to spark debate and showcase corporate services tools to support client needs anywhere in the world.
In a recent 16-minute installment, Robert McHugh, Global Sales Support Manager for CT Corporation, discusses the opportunities and challenges of doing work internationally and how law firms can structure their internal operations to best address increasingly complex global legal work. US law firms are perpetually exposed to different laws, business cultures and a wide array of penalties for compliance violations. This combination only increases the number of obstacles for which law firms need to be prepared.
“We see that it's easy for US attorneys to underestimate the amount of ongoing work that is required to keep an entity in compliance—and this can be a problem. Globally, the trend is that there are more and more requirements to keep an entity in compliance,” said McHugh. “Most countries now require an ultimate beneficial owner filing or a register maintained with his corporate records – that wasn't the case five years ago. It’s an uphill battle full of potential problems we see as firms take on global work.”
It is also vital for law firms to research, stay abreast and communicate about significant cross-border updates and trends. It can be difficult to get new information because relevant legal updates don’t necessarily make the news. Staying informed is especially critical for those who choose to take on international work without a global service provider.
“When it comes to global entity management, it's important to have boots on the ground,” McHugh stated. “Even if there aren't changes to laws or regulation development, government authorities publish guidance on certain laws. And this guidance goes essentially unnoticed unless you're looking in the right place.”
McHugh supports CT’s account management teams, its Global Service team, and law firm customers. In this role, he consults on complex transactional and managed services projects, including entity formation and dissolution, annual compliance and large-scale entity reorganizations. CT Corporation provides a suite of international products and services that are always available no matter where a client’s business takes them. From document searches and retrievals to due diligence work and more, these tools provide the support law firms need to address the challenges outlined in the podcast.
