Eversheds defends latest outsourcing
Eversheds has argued that its brand will not suffer as a result of plans to expand its commoditised business arm with the launch of a South African joint venture.
Anthony Davies
The firm has sent lease renewal work previously carried out by its Cardiff office to Johannesburg and is currently training two South African lawyers in Wales.
This is part of a pilot that if deemed successful will within six months see Eversheds launch a joint venture with its South African office to carry out legal process work previously done in the UK. This could see it targeting existing and new corporations, as well as private practice.
The firm claims that no UK jobs will be affected.
Anthony Davies, a litigation partner in Eversheds’ commoditised arm the Legal Systems Group (LSG), said: “Clients are sophisticated enough to understand that Eversheds does both [strategic and commoditised work]. By doing work across the board we understand the business much better than a business that only does London work.”
But the reaction from the market was mixed. Quentin Poole, senior partner at Wragge & Co, said: “If you make a push into this area and build a reputation as a firm that’s famous for relatively low-value commoditised work, there’s a risk that this could shift your brand away from the quality end of your practice.”
Readers' comments (6)
IHateBPP | 18-Jan-2010 1:22 pm
Soon Eversheds' UK presence will consist of a reception desk and a switchboard to India.
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john walton | 18-Jan-2010 6:12 pm
Hasn't anyone noticed the striking similarity between Anthony Davies and Chris Morris? It's as though they were seperated at birth...
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Ashley Balls | 18-Jan-2010 10:35 pm
Surely the real issue is supplying the best possible service to clients. If the commoditised service can be effectively delivered to a satisfied client for a lower cost - how can this damage the brand? The 'trick' is to work with the clients and the outsourcer in a transparent way.
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FB | 19-Jan-2010 2:33 pm
The editorial in the Lawyer yesterday (18.1.10) was spot-on. Eversheds is trying to do what most car manufacturers gave up trying to do in the 1980s: try to have a City runabout and a top-end sports car with the same badge on them. It ain't gonna work guys.
With 735 redundancies to show for itself (costing just how much...) in the recession, the shine has certainly come off the Eversheds dream, and one wonders how many of the firm's vaunted Magic Circle hires are left in the decimated London office.
Eversheds had a great brand, solid and functional, with a good reputation in its core services. Its ambition to go head-to-head with the Magic Circle was hubristic and doomed from the word 'go'. Now it seems to have a crisis of identity, and it will be interesting to see how the new leadership resolves this.
Let it lick its wounds and focus on commoditised work to repair some of the damage, but I suspect that it will turn around in a year's time to find many of its stars have departed and it will be faced with some stark choices in terms of 'where next'.
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Mutton Jeff | 27-Jan-2010 5:09 pm
As even a cursory glance at the pages of any car magazine would show you, car manufacturers have not given up trying to offer up both specialist sports machinery and small family cars, at all. some have, for sure, but others have not and in fact there has been a marked trend for "premium" automotive brands to move into lower-end segments. Audi, makers of the R8 and of esteemed "executive" performance saloons like the RS4 and RS6, make much of their money out of the A3 and are planning a replacement for the A2. BMW has launched the 1-series. Ford, meanwhile - purveyor of automotive white goods to the masses - has no difficulty making a success of desirability items like the Mustang or the GT40. I don't wish to bang the familiar drum about lawyers' commercial skills but it does help to have the facts at hand before drawing sweeping analogies to damn what is actually an entrepreneurial and potentially highly lucrative move from Eversheds. Plenty of corporate counsel would buy their commoditised low end legal work from the quality-assured megabrand that does their corporate transactional work, if the price was right.
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Anonymous | 22-Jul-2010 1:31 pm
It is more than likely UK jobs will go shortly if the scheme is successful - they did it when they outsourced the typing to South Africa and made secretaries redundant at the worst possible time so why shouldn't solicitors if it makes the company more profitable - who needs a company with morals these days?
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