To place the Sullivan & Cromwell approach to running an efficient international practice in perspective, a few relevant facts about the firm may be in order.Sullivan & Cromwell is a New York based firm with 400 lawyers, including 107 partners.

Nearly half of its client base is located outside the USA.

Of the non-US clients, 50% are in Europe, 30% in the Asian Pacific and 20% in Canada and Latin America.

S&C's largest non-US office is in London, with about 25 US lawyers.

Here the firm does general corporate work, corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, US and EC anti-trust, US litigation and US tax law.There are two distinctive aspects to Sullivan & Cromwell's idea of running an efficient international practice.

First, the firm does not attempt to be all things to all clients.

The firm limits its practice essentially to the delivery of US legal services.S&C is one US law firm that does not practise the law of other jurisdictions, except for selective EC competition law work.Our approach leaves ample scope for an interesting international practice.

New York law is a popular choice for transnational matters.

The American style of legal practice, with its emphasis on getting the job done, is attractive to many participants in transnational work.

Sullivan & Cromwell has always relied on internal growth, with very few lateral entrants at either the partner or associate level.

The effective practice of domestic law of other countries would require a development of our legal staff that could not be achieved consistently with our policies on lateral entrants.Secondly, we have as few branch offices as possible.

They are difficult to staff.

They are expensive to operate.

They increase the amount of time and expense that must be devoted to firm management and administration.

A compelling and realistic economic case must be established before opening a new office.These two principles - doing only what we do best and limiting the locations from which we practise - help Sullivan & Cromwell to work on the international scene with a fair degree of efficiency.Robert Osgood.It is often assumed that international practice is the prerogative of the large metropolitan firm.

This is not the case and there is no reason why a smaller firm cannot form an international resource.Even in Britain large partnerships are not the norm.

When one moves, however, to the southern Mediterranean countries firms of about 15 partners are exceptional.

Thus, international businesspeople in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece will expect their firm to have an international resource and size is not a handicap.

An English partnership of three to four partners may well find it easier to link with such a firm.Clearly the expense of establishing an overseas presence is beyond most small practices.

However, there is no reason why a firm cannot belong to the type of network or club that has mushroomed over the last four years.

My firm, Roodyn Porter Manski, a two-partner firm, helped form such a grouping called Euro-Cabinet in November 1989 and all of our member firms are 20 partners or under.

We can relate more easily to each other since we understand the type of practice management, clients, staffing relations and strategies of the small to medium-sized practice.Not every international transaction is a capital market matter.

There are any number of international cases in litigation, crime, the more straightforward commercial and company transaction, employment, franchising and property that would be quite inappropriate for a large City firm to handle in terms of cost.

For example, we assist the Legal Protection Group in relation to accidents suffered by the insured of various insurance companies they represent overseas.

Some of the claims are quite small but require careful case preparation and liaison with overseas solicitors.Through developing an international outlook by knowledge of other languages, legal systems and business cultures, the development of international contact by attending conferences, joining local chambers of commerce and bilateral law associations, development of existing leads within the firm and the formalisation of a group with a proper structure, charter, philosophy and marketing initiative one can transform a small practice into an international one.In terms of work generation it has the threefold advantage of, first, work passed within the group, secondly, insuring that your existing clientele do not go to another firm which has such an international resource and, thirdly, the attraction of work through the proper marketing of the group.David Roodyn.