Manchester has become a competitive breeding ground for back office-style legal processing centres and Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) wants to be one of the city’s biggest players.
In 2014 Richard Sawtell left Addleshaw Goddard to set up BLP’s legal services delivery team. The office has presented a number of management challenges for Sawtell but despite this he still plans to triple its size in the next 18 months.
The office was opened in 2014 as part of a four-pronged mapping and outsourcing programme aimed at cutting costs. Since its launch the team has undertaken work for a number of high profile clients such as Aviva, Tesco and the Olympic Delivery Authority.
BLP has invested heavily in the office and in April announced its intention to increase the number of staff there to 100 by the end of the 2015/16 financial year. Currently, headcount stands at around 70 but, looking further to the future, Sawtell has targeted building up a 210-person office.
The Manchester team has carried out work for 75 of the firm’s partners over a variety of practice areas including real estate and litigation so far. The majority of the work comes out of BLP’s London office but the team has also recently started carrying out work for teams in Singapore. Despite the geographical differences Sawtell claims that the type of work carried out is easily transferred to the service delivery team.
“The work is very similar,” he says. “It’s a legal process. The only difference is you don’t get the same face-to-face interaction. There’s a difference in working hours but then some of the work we do for Singapore is actually for clients in America.
“We have a fairly young team and they take all of it in their stride,” Sawtell adds.
Management skills
Although Sawtell believes having a young team means his staff are keen to work on a variety of projects, he admits he has had to adjust his management style. “My first lesson was ‘don’t be condescending’,” he says. “The team wants to be professional and they want their opinions listened to. They want you to have confidence in them, and they want to know where they’re going.”
Career progression has been a major touchpoint for firms that have opened legal and back office service centres and has led to a push against the traditional path of entering the profession. This push has led to some firms allowing processing centre staff to apply for training contracts. BLP has adopted this approach and currently has one trainee, who joined from its Manchester office.
This approach to training has also been adopted by Addleshaw Goddard’s transactional service team (TST), which is set to see its first trainee qualify in the coming months. Addleshaws TST head Mike Potter says this career development is fundamental to attracting and keeping talent.
“The people that we’re managing are really bright ambitious people so we have to make sure that they have both the supervision and the freedom to manage their careers,” says Potter.
“Lots of people in these teams are ultimately aspiring to get training contracts and it has been key to us to support their career ambitions.”
Commoditisation
A major focus for Sawtell has been differentiating his office from others in the market. “Commoditisation is one of our least favourite words,” he says.
“When your process is commoditised the only way people can distinguish between competing products is price, and when you start just competing on price it’s just a race to the bottom.
“We’re looking to identify where there is a real client requirement, which isn’t fulfilled by a competitor, and then honing in on that,” he adds.
Although Sawtell claims the type of work being carried out by the legal services delivery team spans a number of practice areas, it is understood that the majority of work is still focused on real estate. However, Sawtell believes the level of work the team carries out is often of a higher complexity than what is delivered by other firms.
“I know a lot of people talk about process but it’s more about what that process is there to do,” he says. “We’ve called it processing with purpose. It’s taking the best way and making sure the right person does the right task at the right time.”
Due diligence
At BLP the bulk of the expertise comes from a small team of due diligence lawyers who work on a fully flexible basis. The lawyers are a minimum of 8 years qualified and are described by Sawtell as having a “deep knowledge over a very narrow part of the process”.
Addleshaws’ processing team differs in this regard as TST is based in the firm’s main Manchester office. Potter says this allows the paralegals to increase their knowledge and carry out a more diverse range of work.
“Because we have that greater level of training and supervision it means the work the team does is complex,” says Potter. “Because we have been here for five years we have some very experienced people and they are able to do far more than brand new paralegals that are starting out in their career.
“By being in the same location it allows paralegals to do more work but enables lawyers to build relationships with those paralegals much more,” he adds.
Although BLP has a smaller legal services headcount than its competitors, its plans for expansion will no doubt add to the experience it can draw on. If the office manages to triple its headcount as Sawtell plans, it could become a highly attractive alternative for clients looking for lower cost process-driven work.