EY & Riverview Law: clients will determine success of new venture

The purchase of legal services ‘disruptor’ Riverview Law by business behemoth EY may not be as big a deal as suggested, according to John Gould, partner at Russell-Cooke. The purchase was widely reported as significant in terms of the global accountancy firm’s advance into legal services territory. Writing in NLJ online, however, Gould suggests the transaction may be ‘better understood as an off-the-shelf purchase of backoffice functions’ and questions whether it will ‘make EY more competitive than the in-house innovations of existing large law firms. Perhaps the real story here is that what really matters is who holds and can sustain an overall relationship with each client,’ he says.