Fresh from sealing a landmark deal with Lawyers On Demand (LOD) to provide freelance lawyering services to its clients, DLA Piper will roll out the service in Australia following LOD’s merger with Asia-Pacific rival AdventBalance.
DLA has extended its collaboration with LOD to Australia as part of a global arrangement between the two firms to work together across the world. The international expansion follows LOD’s merger with AdventBalance, which has offices across Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Hong Kong and Singapore, to create one of the largest world’s largest New Law businesses.
DLA agreed a deal with LOD late last year to direct alumni towards the freelance lawyer service, who will then service the global law firm when it requires extra resource. At least 50 DLA lawyers are expected to join by the end of 2016 while LOD’s current pool of 400 lawyers are also available to DLA.
Simon Levine, DLA’s global co-chief executive (pictured) said: ‘We have had a truly fantastic response in the UK from both our clients who are using our flexible lawyers and our alumni who have signed up to be flexible lawyers. Our aim is to offer our clients the same high-quality, innovative service wherever they do business and we therefore entered into the collaboration with LOD with the intention of expanding internationally. It makes absolute sense to launch our flexible lawyering solution in Australia next and we are very excited to bring this exciting new model to the market.’
DLA’s global roll out of its LOD deal marks the firm overseas arrangement for the UK-based freelance lawyer service.
Jonathan Brenner, co-founder of LOD, added: ‘Our collaboration with DLA Piper has exceeded all our expectations and we are delighted, though not surprised, to be ‘going global’ so soon after the UK launch. Today’s news comes hot on the heels of LOD’s ground-breaking merger with AdventBalance, and clearly demonstrates the enormous potential of the deal. We’ve taken New Law global and, in doing so, have created the perfect storm. Watch this space for more to come.’
tom.moore@legalease.co.uk
