The Global Legal Post reports..
Big Four giant hires executives from managed legal services rivals to ramp up offering to in-house legal departments
Big Four accountancy firm Deloitte has stepped up its US legal offering with the launch of a Legal Business Services practice offering managed legal and consultancy services.
Three senior executives have been hired — from alternative legal services firms Integreon and Elevate and consultancy Gartner — to help spearhead the expansion of the business, which aims to help corporate legal departments ‘accelerate the transformation of the business of law’.
However, unlike in many jurisdictions including the UK, the practice will not offer legal advice in order to conform with US bar rules outlawing multi-disciplinary legal practices.
The management team of the business, which sits with Deloitte Tax, includes the three new hires plus Deloitte Tax partners Valerie Dickerson and Dan Lange, Don Fancher, US and global leader for Deloitte Forensic, and Scott Read, a principal at Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory.
The new members of the team are principal Mark Ross, who joined in January from Integreon, where he was global head of contracts, compliance and commercial services; managing director Lewis Christian, who joined last month from Elevate; and fellow managing director Richard Levine, who came on board in May from Gartner.
Ross and Christian will focus on contract lifecycle management while Levine will lead on resource allocation.
Dickerson said while Deloitte was bringing existing services under a single umbrella it was also looking to make further hires on top of the trio already secured.
