Faraway, so close – two visions of nearshoring

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With even Freshfields unveiling plans to put hundreds of staff in Manchester, we teamed up with Scottish Development International to assess the rush to nearshore. Is it driven by costs or a deeper rethinking of the legal industry?

To say Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s launch of a support and legal services centre in Manchester was one of the biggest stories of 2015 would be an understatement. While back-office outsourcing and legal process outsourcing had legal process outsourcing had been the subject of much debate within the profession for years and the modern era of northshoring by global law firms was pioneered by Allen & Overy (A&O) and Herbert Smith in 2011, news that the 270-year-old Freshfields is to house up to 300 support and legal staff in Manchester by next year sent reverberations around the City. A&O had done that already in Belfast – and delivered significant cost savings to boot – but this was Freshfields, the most conservative of London’s Big Four.

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Clifford Chance avoids nearshoring with plans for low-cost hub in Canary Wharf

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400 support staff to be housed five minutes away from HQ

While peers have chosen low-cost hubs farther afield in the UK, Clifford Chance (CC) is moving its back-office staff from its Canary Wharf headquarters to a new location five minutes’ walk away.

The firm will transfer 400 operational staff to an open-plan office in a building occupied by State Street Bank & Trust at Churchill Place in a bid to cut back on costs.

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DLA strikes landmark deal to offer contract lawyering through LOD

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Putting aside the rivalries that result in little collaboration or innovation within the legal market, DLA Piper has struck a highly unusual deal to provide contract services to its clients via Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP)-owned Lawyers On Demand (LOD).

The move sees DLA team up with LOD to create and manage a contract lawyer business. DLA alumni will be the catalyst for the launch, with around 50 lawyers expected to join LOD by the end of 2016 to service the global law firm when it requires extra resources. LOD’s current pool of 400 lawyers will also be available to DLA.

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Guest post: Artificial intelligence – the robots are/are not coming

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IBM Watson. Google’s driverless cars. Uncanny recommendations from Amazon, Siri, and Google Now. Not to mention the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award for 2015 going to Martin Ford’s Rise of the Robots: Technology and the threat of a jobless future, summarised as:

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Deus ex machina: Riverview Law targets in-house with legal tech consultancy

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Alternative legal services provider Riverview Law has launched a new service in a bid to help in-house teams develop automated legal processes.

Referred to as its ‘Solutions Prototyping Consultancy‘, Riverview is targeting large global corporations and mid-sized companies with the aim of helping them develop a technology-driven operating model.

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Guest post: Who’s afraid of IBM Watson? Machine learning and the future of law

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Recently in New York, Adam Smith Esq had the opportunity to invite a couple of dozen law firms to ‘An Introduction to IBM Watson’ at the brand new $1bn IBM Watson facility down on Astor Place. This is not going to be a report on that event, except insofar as it helped advance our thinking on the general concept of ‘machine learning,’ which was also the topic of a lead article in the current McKinsey Quarterly.

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