Telecoms retail giant Dixons Carphone will launch its first formal panel process in December 2015, with the aim to “formalise external legal relationships”.

The panel, which would be the company’s first since merging earlier this year, may see the current informal legal roster change or even shrink.

This is also the first formal panel that general counsel Nigel Paterson, who moved to the company from BT earlier this year, will oversee.

His appointment signalled the end of the joint general counsel role between Carphone Warehouse general counsel Tim Morris and Dixons general counsel Helen Grantham following the finalisation of the merger in August 2014.

Paterson, who featured in The Lawyer’s Hot 100 in 2014, was general counsel of BT’s consumer legal, governance, compliance and regulatory team for over a year, and worked for the telecoms group since 2000.

It is understood that the final lineup will be announced in February 2016.

Linklaters and Osborne Clarke led on the £3.5bn merger between Carphone Warehouse and Dixons last year to form a single company with a market cap of more than £3.4bn and 2,900 shops in Europe.

DLA Piper was on both Dixons and Carphone Warehouse’s adviser list for many years prior to the merger and was one of legacy Dixons’ panel firms. Earlier this year, the firm advised Dixons Carphone on its foray into the US market through a 500-store deal brokered with US telecoms company Sprint, represented by Morrison & Foerster.