Deloitte Legal’s LMC rounds on Asia markets

Deloitte Legal’s recent global launch of Legal Management Consulting (LMC) follows a deliberate strategy in China to build a new kind of firm consorting with the Deloitte culture, rather than a simple acquisition or alliance, senior lawyers with the firm say.

According to China’s LMC lead, Mark Schroeder, LMC requires “lawyers plus” to deliver tech-enabled legal and regulatory advice.

“Our platform also includes tools that we can use to help clients reduce the costs and improve the quality of their regulatory compliance activities in China,” says Schroeder. “The technology and systems we’re developing in/and for clients in China was created in multiple jurisdictions and across different service lines. The delivery requires legal, process and tech talent.”

Deloitte Legal describes LMC as a global multidisciplinary offering designed to help general counsel and their in-house legal department teams navigate rapid legal industry transformation and deliver more value with less resources. Its launch also follows an expansion of its legal services in London to further target in-house counsel.

As financial, legal and technology spheres align more closely, “Big Four” accounting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited’s legal services arm and other Deloitte practices around the world have targeted improving corporate counsel operating models to deliver faster integrated services within enterprises. LMC services can enable legal departments to use technology more efficiently and elevate effectiveness in monitoring risk.

“Whether Deloitte Legal was the ‘first’, the ‘last’ or somewhere in between to target legal services would probably depend on the jurisdiction in question,” Patrick Yip, Senior International Adviser at Shanghai Qin Li Law Firm, a member of the Deloitte Legal global network, told Asia Business Law Journal. “For China, however, Shanghai Qin Li Law Firm would be one of the earlier firms to enter the Legal market.