The report, ‘Are the Big Four reshaping the future of legal services?’, published this week, is based on in-depth interviews with lawyers from across the commercial sector.
It identifies how, while the Big Four originally set out to seize high-value legal work, they have since changed their strategy to one of offering integrated solutions. They are offering clients a higher integration of technology, project management and process management than can traditional firms.
Moreover, the Big Four now tends to choose its leadership from internal talent, often with non-legal backgrounds, rather than recruiting top talent from law firms.
‘The last time they tried to enter the legal profession in the 1990s, their strategy was we’re just like law firms only bigger,’ says David Wilkins, Lester Kissel Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, in the report.
‘But that’s not their strategy anymore. Their strategy is we provide a different kind of offering, moving from a fee-for-service model to an integrated solutions model.
‘The Big Four can offer a far higher integration of technology, project management and process management; they employ a huge number of people across a huge range of specialties and they are way more global than even the most global law firm. This is why, for many kinds of issues that companies face, it’s a very attractive offering.’
According to Wilkins, they are not interested in one-off matters but want the ‘run-the-company’ matters. He provides the example of Bayer’s $66 billion acquisition of Monsanto in 2016, where parties were advised by several top-tier law firms but the post-merger work―integration of contracts and the policies and procedures―was awarded to PwC.
