Biglaw, Contract Attorneys

Which Biglaw Firm Is Entering The Contract Attorney Market?

What does this mean for current associates at the firm?

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While it’s easy to associate contract attorneys with document review, a task that’s reviled by lawyers everywhere, some contract attorneys are actually performing fulfilling work as opposed to the mind-numbing button clicking that is doc review. Having watched companies like Axiom Law become wildly successful, some law firms have decided to venture into the contract attorney market themselves.

Last summer, we heard that DLA Piper’s London office was toying with the idea of creating a contract attorney group where firm alumni would be able to offer up their services. This idea was apparently modeled after what other U.K. firms like Freshfields and Allen & Overy have done over the course of the past year or two.

More than a year has passed, and now DLA Piper is launching an entirely different kind of venture. The firm will be teaming up with Lawyers on Demand Limited, a British contract lawyer firm. Here’s more information from the Am Law Daily:

DLA Piper’s [Stephen Allen, the firm’s service delivery and quality director], said the firm decided that working with Lawyers in Demand would be a better choice. “We’ve chosen LOD to run this for us, including the recruitment and training of lawyers,” he said. “We decided that partnering made sense. They’ve got a tried and tested model.”

Many of the contract lawyers working with the firm will be former DLA Piper employees, Allen said.

LOD has roughly 400 freelance lawyers in its network. It was started in 2007 by two partners at the London firm Berwin Leighton Paisner, where Allen served as director of innovation from 2009 to 2012. In 2012 Berwin Leighton spun off the contract lawyer unit, with the firm keeping 80 percent and LOD co-founders Jonathan Brenner and Simon Harper getting the rest, according to an October 2014 article in The Lawyer. Last year, LOD had revenue of £12 million ($18 million), a 42 percent increase over the previous year, according to The Lawyer.

DLA Piper doesn’t have plans to extend this program to the United States — yet. First, the firm will conquer England, the Asia-Pacific region, other European countries, and New Zealand. Should current associates worry about their jobs in the wake of DLA’s alliance with LOD? “If anything, I think it’s better for them,” Allen said in an interview with the Am Law Daily.

Allen says DLA Piper’s current associates will be able to “work a more flexible schedule” because of this arrangement. That isn’t likely to comfort associates — everyone knows that people who are unemployed have very flexible schedules.

Do you have any additional details on what’s going on at DLA Piper? Please drop us a line.

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DLA Piper Launches Venture With U.K. Contract Lawyer Firm [Am Law Daily]

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