In February, one of the most significant deals in years in the legal services sector passed by almost unnoticed. The merger between U.K. temporary resourcing pioneer Lawyers on Demand (LOD) and Australia’s Advent Balance created a big new law business with global scope: seven offices, 600 lawyers and consultants on its books, and more than 500 corporate and law firm clients. It’s a new milestone for the fast-expanding alternative legal services provider industry, which is providing both competition and opportunity for large law firms.
LOD started life less than a decade ago as a small department within London-based Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP), providing a pool of freelance lawyers to help clients more flexibly manage their in-house legal departments. Since being spun off from the firm in 2012, LOD has expanded rapidly. Its revenue has more than doubled in the past four years, to around $22 million. (The firm’s profit margin is currently around 15 percent—lower than most law firms’ margins, but growing as the business grows, according to co-founder Simon Harper.) LOD’s sights are now set on expanding across Europe and breaking into the U.S. market. Not bad for something that Harper, then a partner at BLP, dreamed up while sitting on a Caribbean beach on a family holiday in 2006.
