In January this year, Linklaters - one of the leading capital-markets law firms headquartered in London - turned its Blue Flag database into a global product. Originally launched in August 1996 as a database of European securities and banking regulations, Blue Flag now extends to Asia-Pacific, with Latin America and eastern Europe due to follow later this year.
Described as a database, Blue Flag sounds uninteresting. In fact, it represents the future of legal practice. Recently, Richard Susskind, a lawyer noted for his grasp of the impact of technology on law, prophesied that law firms of the future would be publishers of legal information. With Blue Flag, Linklaters is on the brink of achieving that goal. Blue Flag is a powerful disseminator of legal advice in a form which investment banks can understand and use. Linklaters' competitors have every reason to be alarmed.
"It was clear to us many years ago that you can't just provide a service in English law, even though it's the law you practise," explains Paul Nelson, a Linklaters partner and one of the architects of Blue Flag. With the advent of the Investment Services Directive and the Second Banking Directive, investment banks needed to be in a position to do business across Europe.