NewLaw industry veteran Lesley Hobbs has launched her own firm, Cognatio Law, to satisfy growing demand within Hong Kong’s legal market for flexible and cost effective legal services.
The firm assists in-house legal teams who are facing downward pressure to reduce their legal project costs, headcount and fixed expenses by seconding experts at short notice onto projects without incurring additional permanent employee costs.
According to Hobbs, Cognatio Law is an evolution in Hong Kong of the flexible lawyering business model that has been around for many years but that has only truly become a regular fixture for in-house legal teams on a global basis in the past 10 years.
Hong Kong is the leading Asia legal centre and it has definitely been undergoing a quiet revolution to challenge the Big Law establishment and traditions that have dictated the way legal solutions were offered in the last century.
“In a very short period, general counsel, heads of legal and in-house legal teams have changed the way they structure various projects to include flexible resourcing to achieve their goals,” said Hobbs.
“While recruitment firms may be able to provide a short-term fix, they don’t match up with in-house legal teams’ long-term goals to reduce headcount or the fixed costs associated with having to employ permanent staff.”
