Irwin Mitchell partner Ros Bever shares her top three tips for success as a family lawyer.
Source: Industry News
Irwin Mitchell partner Ros Bever shares her top three tips for success as a family lawyer.
Source: Industry News
Osborne Clarke IT director Nathan Hayes says that firms should focus on service, not cost cutting in The Lawyer’s 60-second interview on key topics from the upcoming Business Leadership Summit.
Are you surprised by this apparent sudden rush to places like Warsaw and Manila?
Not particularly. It is about time that law firms with large London-based business support or paralegal functions looked to relocate them to lower cost locations. Where best to locate them, whether simply outside of London, near or off shore will be dependent on the size and nature of the firm.
For large truly global firms, off shoring from London would appear to have a significant cost differential, but such an initiative has to be coupled with a greater focus on improving and developing innovative services to clients. No firm will succeed by cost cutting alone.
Is the vocabulary that firms are using i.e. ‘relocating roles’ misleading, in that the reality is these are simply job cuts?
I don’t think it’s misleading. The roles are most likely being relocated as described, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be a human impact on the people in the UK whose roles are being relocated.
What do you think is the salary differential between say Warsaw and Manchester?
Not as significant as the differential between say Warsaw and London – so Dentons and Norton Rose Fulbright seem to be in a good position to make a success of their initiatives. Any firm that is offshoring from somewhere like Manchester to Warsaw will, I am sure, be hoping that the differential stays significant enough over the next few years to offset the substantial one-off transition costs involved. I’m not overly convinced it will, but DLA will be of a different opinion.
Other than costs reduction, what are the biggest advantages of Warsaw over Manchester or Belfast?
If the skills are accessible, I can’t imagine that any other advantages would have as significant an impact as the reduction in costs.
What sorts of roles do you think will be affected?
Back office staff mainly, but I should imagine that those involved in such an initiative will be looking for as many roles as possible to be affected in order to provide as much support as possible to the business case.
Does the fact that the numbers are so large reveal that these firms were over-staffed?
Only firms with large teams are in a good position to glean the benefits of offshoring. So it’s no surprise to me that the number of roles involved in the recent offshoring announcements are so significant.
What job prospects do you think there are for the people who lose their roles in these cuts?
Within legal in London job prospects are patently not as strong as they were before the recent spate of offshoring announcements.
What sorts of challenges does a move like this create for the lawyers working in head office?
Unless the current service is substandard I would suggest in the short term during the transition process that service quality will drop although in the longer term, as long as the initiative is a success, they will no doubt recover and possibly exceed the current arrangements.
Do you think we’ll see more of these moves by other major firms?
Yes. Any firm with a large London based business support or paralegal function should be looking at relocating those services at least to a UK region outside London if not to a near shore or off shore location.
Osborne Clarke IT director Nathan Hayes is part of the advisory board for The Lawyer’s upcoming Business Leadership Summit. Find out more about the event and register your place to attend here.
Source: Industry News
DAC Beachcroft has agreed a formal best friends relationship with Northern Ireland insurance firm McKinty & Wright.
The three-year deal will see DAC and McKinty & Wright refer work to each other from shared clients as well as combining the marketing of the two firms.
DAC has offices across England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland but has no offices of its own in Northern Ireland.
Managing partner David Pollitt said that the agreement would allow DAC to offer an “unrivalled coverage across the UK and Ireland” now that the firm has bases across all five jurisdictions.
Belfast-based McKinty and Wright is a specialist insurance defendant firm and has 19 lawyers and seven partners. The agreement will launch on 1 June.
In April DAC submitted an application to the Malaysian Bar Council for a licence to form a joint venture (JV) in the region. The JV will be set up with DAC’s existing local association firm Gan Partnership. The two firms have worked together since 2012 when Gan Partnership launched after a number of its lawyers left local firm Le Hishammuddin Allen & Gledhill.
DAC also has associations in Canada with McCague Borlack and Brrazil through Demarest Advogados. The firm also operates a number of best friend relationships across Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden.
Source: Industry News
The Lawyer deputy editor Matt Byrne reveals the jam-packed agenda and themes in the upcoming Business Leadership Summit and Awards on 28 and 29 September. To find out more about the event’s brilliant speaker lineup, the themes in the conference and how to book your place, click here. To enter the Business Leadership Awards, click here.
Source: Industry News
Schoenherr has launched the comprehensive Anti-Corruption Guide for CEE (the “Guide”). The guide provides an overview of all relevant anti-corruption and related criminal law regulations throughout the region. It encompasses off and sanctions as well as presenting an overview of the limits of criminal liability. The guide is now available online an was published by Schoenherr’s compliance & white collar crime expert, Heidemarie Paulitsch. A total of 23 authors fr across Central and Eastern Europe have collaborated on the guide.
The new Schoenherr online knowledge portal (Knowledge Portal) is being launched in conjunction with the publicatio the guide. It is a comprehensive legal comparison tool which can be used to research different legal questions across jurisdictions. The portal is designed to be user-friendly and populates answers at the click of a button.
“Our anti-corruption guide will steer the reader in a clear manner through the anti-corruption laws across Central and Eastern Europe. I am thrilled that with this publication, we can also simultaneously use the new Knowledge Portal, wh can facilitate simplified comparison of legislation across different jurisdictions.” says Heidemarie Paulitsch who initiat the publication.
You can access the Anti-Corruption Guide at knowledge.schoenherr.eu.
Source: Industry News
TE Connectivity Ltd. (NYSE: TEL), a Swiss domiciled world leader in connectivity and sensors, completed its acquisition of Jaquet Technology Group, a Swiss dom- iciled global engineering and manufacturing company.
Bär & Karrer acted as legal counsel to TE Connectivity. The team included Ralph Malacrida, Mani Reinert (competition law), Thomas Stoltz, Micha Schilling, Célia Jimenez, Jonas Bornhauser (IP/IT), Philipp Gubler and Florian Roth.
Source: Industry News
Investindustrial, a leading European investment group, has signed an agreement with Catelli S.r.l. to acquire 60% of the share capital of Artsana Group S.p.A..
Bär & Karrer acts as Swiss legal and tax counsel to Investindustrial in this trans- action. The Bär & Karrer team includes Paolo Bottini, Susanne Schreiber, Matthias Bizzarro, Michel Morelato and David Trachsel.
Source: Industry News
Bates Wells Braithwaite has just finished shortlisting 10 fantastic projects which were successful in the 2016 application process, and have now moved into the development phase.
Over the next few weeks each of them will be developing their projects and preparing for their pitch at the finalé event on the evening of 22 June.
Each project’s summary of their pro bono needs for their development phase can be viewed here: 2016 shortlisted. The shortlisted organisations are:
For further information on Stephen Lloyd Awards in general, please visit www.stephenlloydawards.org.
Source: Industry News
Osborne Clarke has adopted a “sit anywhere, work anywhere” policy in its new Thames Valley office.
The firm’s lawyers have been working open plan and flexibly since 2001, but the new “connected approach” means they will no longer have an allocated desk and can work anywhere.
The approach means all desks will need to be cleared at the end of day, making staff less reliant on paper in the workplace.
“Before we moved offices in Reading, everyone had an allocated desk,” said head of organisational development Barry Gipson. “But as we instigated the move, it gave us all the more reason to think about new ways of working and how it would work in practice.”
Gibson said the new way of working had enabled the firm to make the most of the space and save costs. The amount of square footage occupied by Osborne Clarke has gone down, while the amount of client space has increased, as Reading becomes more of a hub for international clients travelling to the UK.
The changes mean there will now be fewer desks in the Reading office compared to the number of full-time staff. However, Gipson, who has been heavily involved in the eight-month long project and discussions with staff, said this was not an issue.
“It’s not a problem if all the desks are taken up, as you can just go and sit in the café or meeting areas,” he said. “It wasn’t an imposed thing and we also have a lot of touch-down desks for visitors that can be used.”
There are currently no plans to adopt the new working policy in Osborne Clarke’s other offices in the UK, although it could be an option if the structure takes off.
“All the initial signs are pleasing,” said Gipson. “I think there is an appetite for moving other offices in this direction, but we need to sit down with those lawyers to talk through their needs.”
Osborne Clarke follows a whole host of firms to have announced a mixture of agile and flexible working options. US firms Shearman & Sterling, White & Case and Mayer Brown recently announced agile working policies this year, with Macfarlanes revealing a new flexible working scheme and Foot Anstey piloted “warm-desking” last year.
Source: Industry News
Halebury head of BD Helen Burness provides the alternative legal providers’ perspective on law firms’ strategy to outsource work (and roles) to Warsaw and Manila in The Lawyer’s 60-second interview on key topics from the upcoming Business Leadership Summit.
Are you surprised by this apparent sudden rush to places like Warsaw and Manila?
I’m not necessarily surprised by the move. Since the crash in 2008 and the rash of outsourcing which occurred, Big Law firms have been constantly looking at ways to reduce overheads and streamline their businesses. The timing of the announcements is interesting, but the fact it is happening is not a surprise. Other industries did this a long time ago.
There was the previous spate of outsourcing to countries such as India and South Africa which tended to be driven by their low-cost centres. There were mixed reviews on the success of those ventures but a lot should have been learned since then about successful outsourcing. The trend for firms to expand their international reach it is not surprising, as there is an appetite to move away from traditional large and expensive London HQs. Improved technology makes this more of a possibility too, which I suspect is why we are also seeing a broader range of outsource locations.
Is the vocabulary that firms are using i.e. ‘relocating roles’ misleading, in that the reality is these are simply job cuts?
When undergoing such streamlining, firms will always look to use ‘positive’ language, to keep the PEP levels high and meet customer expectations something has to give. However by creating these efficiencies, businesses are able to grow.
Other than costs reduction, what are the biggest advantages of Warsaw over Manchester or Belfast?
For international firms keen not to be seen as too London/UK-centric, moving part of their back office function to a CEE location could be seen as positive central ‘relocation’ of resources.
What sorts of roles do you think will be affected?
If recent examples of similar moves are an indicator, I would anticipate that back office functions such as IT helpdesk, finance and billing systems, secretarial or document systems and possibly due diligence capability would be most likely affected.
What job prospects do you think there are for the people who lose their roles in these cuts?
The legal industry and those that work in it are generally regarded as highly trained and skilled, which is one of the reasons legal secretaries and support staff in legal are more highly paid than in other industries. It is hard to say what the prospects are for those who are will lose their roles, but they should note that they have good, transferable skills.
What sorts of challenges does a move like this create for the lawyers working in head office?
Usually it’s around trust and continuity of service if a provider is moved to a different time zone/location. There will need to be internal comms to ensure all know how to access services moving forward and be reassured that support level will not be compromised by the move.
Managing change in an organisation is always a challenge and getting used to new systems and processes may be difficult. However, in reality how often lawyers will have engaged with their London based colleagues in person is questionable, so from a certain perspective there may not be much difference.
Do you think we’ll see more of these moves by other major firms?
I think all levels should consider it and will. What is important for any firm looking to outsource is to ensure that they have correct procedures in place for quality control.
Ultimately, despite the human cost involved, is this what a properly managed large business ought to be doing?
In this competitive market, I think all law firms need to ensure they are run efficiently in a business-like way and remain agile. In a partnership model where the biggest overhead (aside from property) is people, ‘back office’ functions will always be looked at first for cost-saving.
Halebury BD head Helen Burness is part of the advisory board for The Lawyer’s upcoming Business Leadership Summit. Find out more about the event and register your place to attend here.
Source: Industry News
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