Developing Global Clients in Bangkok

A fantastic session with the entire team of lawyers from the DLA Piper Bangkok office where we spent most of the day looking at various aspects of developing international client relationships.  This is an area that all global law firms struggle with – despite the fact that this is very reason firms develop significant global networks.

We started off by looking at the impact that international cultural differences can have when working across the barriers of culture, language, geography and technology.  Many of the lawyers present came up with fascinating examples of how these cultural differences have significantly impacted on the effective resolution of cross-border matters.

We then moved on to look at the need to have a very structured approach to developing an effective and delivering global network.  Most lawyers have a network of sorts but not many look at network development and enhancement from a strategic perspective.  We focused on four key areas which lawyers need to work on when developing a strategic approach to networking:

• The internal global network – who should we look to bring into our network if the firm has over 3,000 fee-earners?
• The client side – who within exisiting, dormant and pipeline clients do we need to build a meaningful relationship with (key message – think beyond the counsel…)
• Key referrers – who are influencers of our key target market?  Bankers,accountants, VC and PE partners etc.
• Sector influencers – developing an active brand in key sectors can be critical and therefore having good connections in sector bodies, with journalists etc. is essential

Finally we looked at using social media platforms (especially Linkedin) to help drive the development of a strategically thought-through network.

It was a whistle-stop visit for me but hopefully one which was appreciated by the delegates.

Oh and we finished off by having a stunning dinner on the banks of the Chao Phraya river.

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