Bakers' doyenne

Several years ago, I attended an event in Paris at which Christine Lagarde, the then chairman of Baker & McKenzie, was also present. At one point a young French lawyer from a local firm approached her as if she was seeking an autograph from a film star. At the time I was vaguely aware that Lagarde’s leadership of a US law firm had made her into something of an iconic figure within the French business community. The reverential tones of the encounter that I witnessed seemed to confirm this.

Since then, Lagarde’s fame has spread well beyond the confines both of the legal community and France’s borders, particularly in recent weeks.

She has won plaudits from the Financial Times for being a “figure of calm reassurance” at the height of the banking crisis, it has been widely claimed that she urged Hank Paulson to rescue Lehman Brothers – and she’s even been interviewed by Jeremy Paxman.

But according to The Economist, her popularity does not extend to her home country. “With over 20 years spent at an American law firm, a perfect command of English, and economically liberal instincts, Ms Lagarde (pictured) is an embodiment of all that the French elite distrusts – and she is a woman to boot,” it writes.

In fact, Bakers hates being described as an American law firm. It has a point. In my book it is the only firm that can claim to be ‘multinational’, as opposed to international. Not only is its reputation stronger outside the US than it is in its ‘home' country; but its leadership has been spread across its network for decades. This last point is underlined by Lagarde’s own career, which, incidentally, puts the efforts of senior UK lawyers to spread their wings beyond the confines of the law very much in the shade.

See Global 100: Man of the world for a more in-depth look at Baker & McKenzie's international growth.