DLA Piper must ensure “the firm is prepared to broaden its services
and face the growing competition of the accountancy firms”
BY:
Alexis de Hahn
Avocat Reporteur
PROJECT COUNSEL MEDIA
16 September 2020 (Paris, France) – Yesterday we profiled Deloitte Legal’s new head of managed services, Emily Foges, who is looking to hire a band of in-house lawyers to boost her nascent unit within the legal arm of the Big Four accountancy firm. She has been conducting a series of interviews in the legal media about her plan for a string of new services that will combine managed services capabilities with the advice of the accountancy firm’s expanding lawyer ranks. She has responsibility over the UK, Europe and the Middle East.
Today, in a follow-up piece, “The Lawyer” interviews DLA Piper‘s global co-CEO Simon Levine who has laid out plans for a new collective of consulting services to turn the law firm into an expansive professional services outfit. The firm has launched a separate umbrella brand, Law&, to target new business areas and broader advisory services besides legal advice. The separate business, which is owned by the partnership, will include several branches and will be anchored on a company, Aldersgate Group, devoted to roll out and test new ideas.
The concept is based on the radical change strategy set out 18 months ago by Levine “to ensure the firm is prepared to broaden its services and face the growing competition of the accountancy firms”. In this respect, the existing “change council” will come up with new ideas and strategies and service delivery teams will be tasked with developing them to improve client service:
“The post-pandemic era is about being a trusted business partner to clients. It was the work that lawyers did 100 years ago, and that now is carried out by big organisations. But at the end of the day, DLA must be a place where a client goes when embarking on a project that is not just legal – it’s tactical, structural and methodological.”
Among the services already launched as part of the new umbrella are DLA Design, a design thinking framework developed with an external consultancy that has already been used to train more than 500 lawyers and staff members during the lockdown period; and a litigation funding client pot worth £150m, which was the result of a collaboration between DLA, Litigation Capital Management (LCM) and the firm’s new third-party funder, Aldersgate Funding.
The headcount within Aldersgate Group, which is led by former DLA partner Jim Holding from Brisbane and currently numbers a small group of consultants and finance experts, is trialing other offerings. For instance, they are experimenting with a boardroom advisory service to guide clients on board behaviour and stakeholder engagement, as well as improve decision-making and approaches to risks.
In a similar way, the firm is piloting in Australia a sustainabilty and ESG (environment, social and governance) consulting line to devise strategies and operational frameworks in a field that is increasingly relevant to corporations’ roadmaps.
Another line will revolve around advisory work on structuring M&A transactions. Levine sees the addition of new offerings as the natural growth dynamic of this new project:
“If you are Amazon, you end up in all sorts of other businesses related to the essential concept of logistics: from books to food and media and films. It is the same for us. While everything is related to law, there are other businesses that can be included in this vehicle.”
Technology will be another focus of Law&’s activity. While it is working on a software to automate commodity tasks, it is reuniting in its operations two platforms piloted over the past few months. They include a crisis simulation training service, called “DLA Piper Project Simulator”, which was inspired by Carillion’s liquidation in 2017 and cost £100,000 to develop; as well as an in-house portal to help landlord clients survive the conditions imposed by the UK Government as part of Covid-19-related measures, which was launched in the early stages of the lockdown.
The corporate vehicle, which was on the receiving end of a “significant” financial investment, will work on mandates either picked up by its consultants or by the firm’s lawyers, with the groups collaborating regularly. DLA Piper plans to hire consultants on a permanent basis working across the firm’s international network.
The firm does not plan to pursue an alternative business structure (ABS) licence to grow the Aldersgate Group, a route pursued by firms such as Reed Smith and Eversheds Sutherland, which is looking to obtain it to develop its NewLaw arm Konexo. Instead, it will evolve as an independent business owned by the partnership.
