The legal arm of Big Four firm, Deloitte, has hired Peggy Pauwels as a new partner in its Legal Management Consulting (LMC) team. She was previously European Head of Commercial Contract Management at credit card giant, Visa.
The group said that in the last two years, Deloitte Legal has more than doubled its UK lawyer headcount and tripled the number of partners.
Pauwels (pictured) will focus on the consumer and TMT industries within Deloitte Legal’s LMC business unit and will also lead on the LMC team’s talent management programme as it continues its rapid expansion.
She brings to Deloitte Legal over 25 years of experience as a lawyer and commercial contract specialist. She also held legal and business transformation roles with Capita and BT.
Jack Diggle, global lead partner for Deloitte’s Legal Management Consulting practice, commented: ‘Peggy’s strong focus on transformation means she brings a unique set of skills and experiences that bridge the legal and commercial world within the contract lifecycle. With her consumer and TMT specialism and in-depth operational understanding of these businesses, Peggy is well-placed to build out LMC’s legal offering to clients operating in these specialist areas which often demand their own, unique challenges.’
Pauwels, now a Deloitte Legal partner, said: ‘Now is an exciting time to be working with consumer and TMT businesses, both industries having rapidly adapted for changing consumer expectations and upscaled for greater reliance as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
‘I am pleased to be able to expand Deloitte Legal’s services to these industries, assist them in embedding contract life cycle management within their commercial operations as they further transition into future business models and tackle the legal and contracting considerations that significant change warrants.’
And Andrew Lilley, partner and consumer lead for Deloitte Legal, concluded: ‘Clients in the consumer sector are facing a unique set of legal opportunities and challenges in a post-pandemic world. Many are looking to digital to join up physical space with online, with important legal decisions for consumer business leaders to make.
‘Combining our broad consumer business with Deloitte Legal’s specialist legal knowledge and technology offerings means we are able to bring together Deloitte’s cross-firm expertise and service clients across all sectors including consumer and TMT throughout their transformation programmes.’
Is this a big deal? Well, if anyone thought that Deloitte Legal and its legal ops focus was going to slow down then here is the answer: it’s only going to expand further. Pauwels’s background will also certainly help the group, given her experience at very large companies.
And as the Big Four keep expanding their offering, we can in turn expect the larger law firms, and ALSPs and law companies, to also keep pushing ahead with their own consulting capabilities.
In turn, the entire sector, at least at the top end of the market, will become more focused on areas such as contracting efficiency, contract data capture and data leveraging, better workflows, improving the day to day running of legal teams, and generally helping to drive positive change in the sector.
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