Geopolitical fragmentation, capital flows and strategic industries are redrawing the global legal map. Analysis of more than 850 office events reveals why the old rules of international growth no longer apply.
When Latham & Watkins closed its Abu Dhabi and Doha offices in 2015 and relocated staff to Dubai, it was more than a routine restructuring. It was a rare public admission of a strategy gone wrong. Managing partners seldom acknowledge mistakes, yet then-chair Bill Voge told journalists that the decision to open three Middle East offices in 2008 had been an error. Some viewed Voge’s comments as an honest admission; others argued the public reversal was reputationally damaging. For much of the 2010s, office strategy was cloaked in controversy and closures like these rarely passed without market commentary.
More than a decade on, the same announcement today would generate little more than a brief news story. The turbulence of the 2020s has weakened the assumptions underpinning growth strategy. Hybrid working, geopolitical fragmentation and shifting market access rules have made international footprints more fluid. Country exits are no longer interpreted as negative steps. This greater flexibility is to be welcomed, but it has created a paradox. Offices are easier to launch, close and reconfigure, but much harder to get right. As global capital corridors take shape, the rewards for being in the right places have increased, but so too have the risks of getting it wrong.
The change is visible in the data. Across more than 850 office events tracked by Prosperant between 2020 and H1 2026, office openings outnumber closures by more than three to one. It is shows the market reconfiguring around shifting capital flows. Greater fluidity, however, should not be mistaken for greater certainty.
The lifespan of a geographic advantage has shortened as geopolitical volatility has taken root in the global economy. The conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have shown how quickly a favorable market can become challenging. The executive orders issued by the Trump administration against several major firms, meanwhile, are evidence of political risk reaching into the legal sector itself. Geopolitics is no longer a backdrop to growth strategy, but one of its principal drivers.
At the same time, many of the assumptions that once underpinned international growth strategies have deteriorated. At the height of globalization, firms could broadly follow economic expansion. GDP growth, trade volumes and foreign investment were imperfect but useful guides to future demand. That relationship has loosened. Private capital has concentrated around strategic industries, geopolitics has reshaped market access, and opportunity has become more selective. Firms are no longer building broad networks to capture growth wherever it appears, but making more deliberate bets on where capital, clients and strategic priorities will converge.
By the time demand looks obvious, the opportunity is often already being captured elsewhere.
The strategic anchors for the next decade are the forces redirecting capital. AI infrastructure, defense, energy security, semiconductors, sovereign investment and supply chain realignment are carving new demand patterns that move faster than annual planning cycles allow. This also explains the shift towards sector-led strategies. By the time demand looks obvious, the opportunity is often already being captured elsewhere. Firms can be constrained by their own success, viewing markets through the lens of existing clients, offices and assumptions. The advantage lies with those willing to challenge those assumptions before the opportunity becomes obvious.
The data is not pointing firms towards a single answer. Larger markets support multiple strategies at once. Poland illustrates the point. Linklaters’ decision to transfer its Warsaw office to Addleshaw Goddard, and Hogan Lovells’ decision to close its Warsaw office, with much of the team ultimately joining DWF, are not contradictory outcomes. They reflect different assessments of future opportunity.
In the Middle East, the signal is to commit, but no longer to the region as a single market. Capital and disputes are still flowing: GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) M&A reached $102B in 2025, and DIFC (Dubai International Financial Centre) caseloads rose 43 percent to more than 1,500 filings. But the UAE and Saudi Arabia are separating into distinct markets with distinct demands. One rewards connectivity and globally mobile capital. The other rewards scale and localization. A single Gulf strategy used to be defensible. It no longer is.
In Hong Kong and Singapore, the signal is to hedge. Hong Kong remains the only city outside London and New York where all ten of the world's largest firms maintain offices. Yet the disputes work is flowing elsewhere. Singapore's SIAC (Singapore International Arbitration Centre) caseload rose 42 percent to a record high, while the value of deals targeting Singapore companies fell to a ten-year low. The footprint argues for staying. The flows argue for placing greater weight where the work is landing. The two are no longer the same decision.
Markets can no longer be grouped together, and regions can no longer be treated as single propositions. Firms are making more precise decisions and acting on them.
This is the research we have already done. More than 800 strategic events between 2020 and H1 2026, analyzed alongside the capital flows reshaping where legal demand is created, captured and contested, market by market.
The question is no longer where to open an office. It is whether your existing footprint still reflects the world now taking shape.
Is your office strategy already out of date?
For law firm leaders, navigating it has never been more complex. The economic indicators that once guided growth strategies have weakened, while private capital, strategic industries and geopolitical fragmentation carve new corridors of demand. Geopolitics now redraws the map faster than strategy can keep up. This is what Prosperant LLP's H2 Forward Guidance was designed for. Built on more than 850 strategic events tracked between 2020 and mid-2026, and enriched with geopolitical, economic, M&A, private capital and disputes analysis, it reveals where future legal demand will be created, captured and contested. Forward Guidance is designed for managing partners, strategy teams and firm leaders making long-term decisions about where to invest, where to deepen capability and, just as importantly, where to step back.
Katy Dowell, Head of Insight at Prosperant LLP, is a leading legal market commentator having spent almost 20 years investigating and reporting on the profession for The Lawyer. Katy was responsible for delivering The Lawyer’s flagship Horizon alert, which has become a must-read for the UK legal community. Katy’s breadth of institutional knowledge combined with her data-led approach help her predict market trends that assist clients with their growth ambitions. As well as working with The Lawyer, Katy has spent time at a PR agency working on press campaigns, white papers, blogs and newspaper articles. She also worked as freelance consultant for major City firms and regional giants.
Katy can be contacted at katy.dowell@prosperant.co.uk
Introducing Obiter
In a judgment, the obiter dicta are the observations made along the way – not the binding decision, but the asides, the reflections, the "while we are here" remarks. They are not the law. They are, often, the most interesting thing the judge said.
That is the spirit of this column.
Obiter is Lawdragon's new home for the people who are actually running, shaping and arguing about the business of law. We are inviting managing partners and heads of department, senior in-house counsel, and the innovators and influencers who are quietly – or loudly – redrawing how legal services are built, sold and delivered. The brief is simple: Tell us what you really think.
Some of what appears here will be provocative. Some of it will be built on hard data rather than received wisdom. Some of it will make an unapologetic case for change, and some will defend the value of things worth keeping. We are not looking for the polished consensus you can read anywhere else. We are looking for the argument behind it.
Because the legal profession does not move forward through agreement. It moves forward through good-faith disagreement – through someone willing to say the billable hour is broken, or that it is not; that AI changes everything, or that it changes less than the headlines suggest; that the partnership model still works, or that it has quietly stopped working for the people it was meant to reward. We want both sides of that argument on the page, and we want readers to leave less certain than they arrived.
Over the next decade, almost every assumption about how law firms operate, how talent is developed and how clients are served is going to be tested. Obiter is where that testing happens out loud.
If you have a view worth defending – and the appetite to have it challenged – we would like to hear from you.
