Little more than a year ago, Paul Smith, a partner in the U.K. firm Eversheds, received a call from the irate head of a European law firm. Up until then, the European firm had regularly worked for Tyco International Ltd. Now, the caller informed Smith, Eversheds had just taken 37 percent of his Tyco business. What, he asked, did the Eversheds partner intend to do about it?
As he recounts the story, Smith rolls his eyes at yet another example of a European firm failing to grasp some basic fundamentals of client service in the modern world. But the caller did have reason for concern. Smith had just led Eversheds’ successful pitch to become Tyco International’s adviser of choice for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). At a stroke, the American security and fire business slashed its legal advisers for day-to-day matters in the region, such as commercial contracts and intellectual property, from around 250 to one. It handed Eversheds, which had revenues of $650 million in 2007, a two-year mandate estimated to be worth more than $20 million in total.
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