Law company Elevate today announced it has acquired Halebury, the lawyers on demand service. Halebury will be an Elevate business, retaining its own team. With the UK-regulated Halebury on board, Elevate now provides both in-house legal teams and law firms with a 360-degree service offering spanning talent, resourcing, consulting, technology and managed services.
Denise Nurse, Founder of Halebury, told Artificial Lawyer: ‘We did this deal because there are great synergies and they are a great team with a similar vision to us in how we provide services. It’s a 2 + 2 = 5 or 6 type of deal.’
‘We can now offer (via the combination) a combined 360 offering to clients. And it’s something that clients are asking for. They want one point of contact to get all the services they need.’
‘We are also an ABS [i.e. a regulated entity under England & Wales legal regulation by the SRA] so in theory we [Elevate] could buy a law firm too,’ she added.
That is to say a law firm could then be added to Halebury, which is part of Elevate.
In relation to technology, especially following Elevate’s buy-out of legal AI company LexPredict, Nurse added: ‘For a client it’s not just one answer, they need the right tech and data analytics also.’
She added that the offering is also about ‘helping to drive change for the client, not just provide a legal solution’ with efficiency gains as a key goal. This would be supported by the growing tech stack of applications that Elevate has either developed internally, now partners with, or has acquired recently.
Also commenting on the acquisition, John Croft, President of Elevate, said: ‘Halebury’s expert talent gives our customers access to an even deeper pool of senior in-house resources and a combined team that can lead and manage complex legal projects from end to end.’
Janvi Patel, co-founder of Halebury added: ‘Both businesses were founded by entrepreneurs with a track record of pioneering alternative legal solutions for clients tired of traditional models and inefficient methods. Now clients have access to the combined expertise of a trailblazing innovator of legal resourcing and the technology and services of the market-leading law company.’
Elevate CEO Lokendra Tomar said: ‘This is another important step in our strategy to revolutionise the sourcing options in the global legal services market.’
The acquisition builds on a period of strong organic growth for Elevate, further expanding its international footprint and bringing its headcount to about 1,000 globally. In Q4 2018, Elevate acquired legal AI technology and consultancy LexPredict.
(More analysis on the bigger picture tomorrow.)