PwC’s legal arm in France, PwC Société d’Avocats, has bought Paris-based consultancy Day One to create ‘Legal Business Solutions’, which is a new practice in France ‘designed to support legal and compliance departments in their transformation and digitalisation’.
It is further proof, if any were needed, that there is an ever-increasing battle going on in the legal sector for consulting and change management expertise around legal ops, legal tech and process improvement.
Day One was created by Olivier Chaduteau and provides transformation and digitalisation consulting services to the legal and compliance professions. It is a relatively small group of two partners and seven associates, but is well-known in France and several other markets.
Clients will benefit from new innovative services such as legal organisation and compliance benchmarking, access to a database of 680 legal tech companies around the world, a Legal Lab think tank focused on innovation in law, and a Legal Operations Circle membership community, PwC said.
Day One has also assisted over 200 legal, compliance and tax departments in 26 countries with their organisational, transformation and digitalisation needs. Clients include 21 CAC 40 companies and a large number of middle-market companies.
The Big Four firm said that the Day One acquisition is ‘aligned with the global PwC network’s broader ambition to strengthen its operations and invest in this new area of expertise under the PwC Legal Business Solutions umbrella’.
‘The link-up is rapidly furthering the strategy of PwC Société d’Avocats, which has invested for many years in providing cutting-edge support for digitalisation and making technology a transformation and competitiveness driver, particularly for legal and compliance departments,’ they added.
Loïc Le Claire, Managing Partner for PwC Société d’Avocats, said: ‘We are delighted to welcome Day One’s teams into the family. This is a strategic opportunity for PwC Société d’Avocats. We are offering something that truly sets us apart from others on the market; it’s the first time that a legal consulting firm has joined forces with a law firm.
‘It comes in response to a widely expressed need among our clients for more integrated solutions that address their transformation and digitalisation challenges. The acquisition embodies our people-driven vision coupled with the power of technology and allows us to boost our positioning as a key player on these major issues.’
And Chaduteau (above), Founder and Managing Partner of Day One, concluded: ‘It’s a strategic move that extends well beyond France’s borders; we are participating in an international process through the PwC network to create a unique new practice that especially meets the needs of legal and compliance departments as regards the efficiency, organisation and modernisation of their delivery model.’
As noted, this is all part of a much wider set of market changes happening from Australia to the UK to California – with talent that understands legal ops and tech consulting, as well as legal process needs, jumping ship from law firms to the Big Four and ALSPs, and vice versa.
The end result is more competition in this space, and clearly the Big Four firms believe they are in a good position to profit from it. However, law firms are not standing still and are in turn increasing their own ALSP and consulting capabilities in order not to be outflanked in terms of what they can offer the clients, such as providing a joined-up set of services extending from expert legal advice, to legal managed services, to legal ops, to legal tech consulting, to building tech tools that support their clients, and more.
It would seem that this battle is only going to grow, and more law firms and ALSPs will inevitably seek to expand what they can offer, just as clients now are paying a lot more attention to these types of joined-up services.