Ernst & Young entity acquires Thomson Reuters’ business; should law firms worry?
EY, the corporate entity that includes the Big Four accounting firm Ernst & Young, has announced an agreement to buy the legal managed services business Pangea3 from Thomson Reuters.
The Artificial Lawyer and LawSites view the announcement as a major development.
“Those who should be paying closest attention to this acquisition are law firms,” according to LawSites. “Every firm, no matter how savvy, needs to realize that their greatest competitors going forward are not other law firms” but are instead alternative legal services providers.
Bloomberg Big Law Business also has coverage.
Providers of legal managed services design, build and staff process-driven systems to complete legal work efficiently and at lower cost, the ABA Journal explained in a June 2017 article. The Pangea3 website touts its document review and analysis, contract management, corporate-compliance services and financial-trade documentation.
Various firms in the EY network will acquire Pangea3, according to a press release. The agreement follows Ernst & Young’s purchase last year of Riverview Law, an alternative legal services provider based in the United Kingdom that provides fixed-fee services to in-house legal departments.
Created in 2004, Pangea3 outsourced U.S. legal work to professionals in India. Thomson Reuters bought Pangea3 in 2010 in a deal valued between $35 million and $40 million. More than a thousand legal professionals on three continents currently are employed by the company.
The acquisition “will make EY one of the leading professional services organizations for global legal advisory services and legal operations services,” according to a statement by Mark Weinberger, EY global chairman and CEO.
See also:
ABAJournal.com: “From Pangea3 to Burford, David Perla steps lively into new roles”
