Global Firms in Focus is a weekly column about internationallaw firm business by chief global correspondent Chris Johnson.Reach him atcjohnson@alm.com.On Twitter:@chris_t_johnson.

If you are a devout follower of the legal press, you've no doubtnoticed that currency has frequently cropped up in our articles oflate.

Global law firms have to manage currency like any other multinational business, ofcourse. But with the overwhelming majority of Big Law revenue stillgenerated in traditionally stable Western markets, currencyexchange has generally been a minor administrative issue ratherthan a serious cause for concern.

No longer.

A number of geopolitical and economic shocks over the past 18months have brought currency high up the managerial agenda. Theweakening of the British pound against the U.S. dollar since theBrexit vote, for example, has had a particularly dramatic impact on the market, strengthening the already considerable buying power of Americanfirms across the Atlantic and helping them further dominate theLondon recruitment market. But any headaches caused by thischangeable trans-Atlantic dynamic pale into insignificance whencompared to what has happened in Russia over the past fewyears.

The double whammy of severe international sanctions imposedfollowing the conflict in Ukraine, and the impact of falling globalenergy prices on the Russian economy, which is still heavilydependent on oil, has resulted in wild swings in the value of the ruble.

The currency practically halved in value in 2014 and has been sovolatile that Travelex, the world's largest currency exchangecompany, has completely stopped trading in Russian rubles for the pasttwo-and-a-half years.

I only discovered this earlier this month, when seeking to buyrubles two days before flying to Moscow to report on a featurearticle, which you can look out for in the coming weeks. Cue apanicked rush into town to find an alternative bureau dechange that was selling the currency. It wasn't the onlypre-travel stress I encountered for this particular trip.

It turns out that the visa application process has becomesignificantly more arduous since I last visited Russia, some sevenyears ago. In addition to the perfectly reasonable questions aboutwhether I've had any specialist training in biological or chemicalwarfare, I also had to list every foreign trip I have made in thepast 10 years. With dates.

I only travel abroad a handful of times each year, but it wasstill a major pain trying to dig up all of the relevantinformation. What would this entail for jet-setting lawyers whospend half their lives crossing international time zones? I canonly imagine.