In a ground-breaking piece of research, legal market experts Acritas has published an Index that shows the power of alternative legal service providers. This new Index has been established to identify the strongest non-law firm brands within this rapidly growing part of the broader global legal industry.
221 senior in-house counsel, collectively responsible for $1.2bn of legal spend, were asked to name organisations that provide legal services, excluding law firms, that first come to mind along with those they most favoured.
The legal industry is fixated on distinguishing work delivered by lawyers and non-lawyers but in reality, clients just want effective solutions to their broad portfolio of legal work. Acritas created this Index to complement its existing Asia Pacific Law Firm Brand Index which has been published annually for the last five years. The aim is to respond to the increasing diversity of legal services providers that in-house departments turn to, to help them provide legal support to their organizations in the most effective and cost-efficient way.
PwC Legal emerges as the strongest brand in the first-ever Acritas Asia Pacific Alternative Legal Brand Index. PwC Legal was the most favoured overall and two times more recognised than the next closest contender for awareness.
David Johnson, Account Director at Acritas, commented: “PwC Legal’s ambitious plans to become a global top 20 legal services player put growth in Asia at the top of its agenda - and our latest research shows this focus in terms of brand strength at least is paying dividends.”
Second place goes to EY who receive an uplift in their market position based on clients’ recognition of its innovative and alternative approaches to doing legal work. KPMG secures third spot in the Index.
“All the Big 4 accounting firms benefit from being dominant brands in the professional services sector, but PwC Legal has made the most progress in being recognised in this region. This visibility lends significant advantage to their brand platform, critical to success across such a vastly diverse market,” said David.
Other strong performing brands included LexisNexis, who perform well in terms of favourability among clients for their useful research and databases, and Thomson Reuters who score top marks for innovation. In fact, Thomson Reuters outperforms the next most innovative player in the Asia Pacific legal market by two-fold.
The findings confirm senior in-house counsel are open to buying legal services from a widening range of providers in their drive to deliver the greatest possible value for their organisations.
“A growing number of companies are implementing technology solutions to help access know-how and organise work, utilising flexible and agile resources to fulfill fluctuating work volume and specialised expertise, or instructing professional services advisors who offer a holistic solution. This is the legal industry reality in 2018. The coming years will favour those firms or non- traditional legal service providers most able to adapt and innovate in this new world”, David added.
(Source: Acritas)
