In what could be the end of its 18 month old general counsel consultancy group, RPC has seen the exit of in-house guru Julia Chain, who moves to join eDiscovery provider Millnet.
Chain (pictured) joins Millnet, which was recently acquired by US firm Advanced Discovery, as UK managing director. Millnet enjoyed turnover of £13m in 2015/16, and claims to be the largest eDiscovery and document services firm in the UK.
Chain had spent only around 18 months with RPC, founding its in-house consulting arm RPC Perform in May 2016. The firm has yet to choose a replacement to lead RPC Perform after the departure of Chain and two of her key deputies.
Several of Chain’s team at RPC Perform are expected to move to Millnet, including Varun Srikumar, who joined RPC from Royal Bank of Scotland, and Andrew Dey, who arrived from Barclays. The group exit leaves RPC Perform without the bulk of its consultants.
Chain was UK managing partner of Anderson Legal until 1998 and later general counsel of T-Mobile, before moving into consultancy work as managing director Huron Legal and later founding her own in-house consultancy team.
Chain told Legal Business: ‘Millnet is the largest eDiscovery firm in England and its acquisition by Advanced Discovery has taken it to a worldwide stage. We found RPC Perform was becoming more of a technology-focused business. Millnet seemed like an ideal fit for the team as we look to move the company into working with corporates. We recognise that law firm clients are still important, and we want to build on that success, as well as expanding further into European markets and the Nordics.’
RPC has recently seen a handover in top level management with the departure of long-term managing partner Jonathan Watmough. Insurance head James Miller was elected managing partner in January ahead of commercial head Tim Anderson.
Miller said: ‘Naturally we’re disappointed as Julia is a class act, but we can see she has been given a fantastic opportunity. The focus of the team’s work had begun to shift more towards technology solutions, so moving to a technology provider is a natural step for her and her team – we understand that. As a client of Millnet, we look forward to continuing to work with Julia over the years to come.’
matthew.field@legalease.co.uk
