American law firms continue to spread out all over the world, but some markets are more appealing than others. We decided to track the hot spots for U.S. firms over the past three years. The chart on the following pages shows recent changes in the number of lawyers at U.S. firms in 20 foreign jurisdictions, as measured by the NLJ 500.

Some of the biggest increases. measured in absolute numbers, came in markets such as Germany and United Kingdom, where U.S. firms are already well-represented. But newer markets such as Australia and Canada also saw big jumps in head count. Canada, Colombia, and South Africa, which had relatively few U.S. firms on the ground a few years ago, all saw remarkable proportional gains.