The movement of the Big Four accounting firms into the legal space continues strongly and none moreso than EY who are planning rapid expansion of their legal division.
Bloomberg Big Law report that EY’s John Knox, Singapore-based and who became EY’s new global legal managed services leader in July, is working to grow the legal division fast.
“Our plan is to double, triple, quadruple the size of our business pretty quickly,” Knox said. That starts with doubling legal managed services revenues over the next 12 months, he said.
Knox’s plan is the latest sign that the Big Four—including Deloitte, KPMG, and PwC—and other alternative legal service providers are making a play for a larger piece of a market traditionally dominated by law firms.
The moves are of particular interest in the US market where some states are now looking at changing the law firm ownership rules, which will intensify the move into the legal space by the Big Four and others, including alternative legal providers.
Deloitte last month unveiled a new U.S. Legal Business Services practice, which will work with in-house legal offices to streamline functions that track client contracts, invoices, eDiscovery, and other functions.
Knox said EY’s legal managed services unit is focusing on many of the same services, including by offering a range of contract lifecycle management tools. The U.S. remains a key area of growth for EY as a result of its being the largest legal market in the world by a significant margin.
As a proportion of EY’s general business the legal services business is relatively tiny. That leaves a lot of room for growth.
Last September, EY announced record combined global revenues of $36.4 billion for the financial year that ended in June of 2019. It has continued to expand with new alliances in China and elsewhere.
Read More on LawFuel
- Lawfront Hits £175m As Private Equity Legal Roll-Up Adds Two More Firms
- Top 5 Custom AI Development Companies for Growth in 2026
- Slaughter And May Still Rules London’s Listed Market. The Problem Is The Market Is Shrinking
- Big Law Firms Have Been Keeping the AI Savings – Now Wall Street Wants Them Back
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citi are asking a rather uncomfortable question of their outside lawyers: if AI is making legal work faster, why aren’t the bills getting smaller? Power Points Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup are pushing major law firms to demonstrate how AI efficiencies are being reflected in their legal bills. Citi has begun asking firms bidding for work to explain their AI-related savings, while Morgan Stanley is moving much of its outside legal work toward competitive bidding and alternative fee arrangements. The pressure goes directly to the BigLaw leverage model, where armies of associates traditionally generated large volumes of billable hours. New LexisNexis research shows 94 per cent of lawyers now use AI for legal work and 55 per cent expect AI to change law firm billing. The battle is shifting from whether lawyers should use AI to a much more interesting question: who gets the financial benefit? For the past few years BigLaw has been enthusiastically telling anyone within PowerPoint range that artificial intelligence will transform legal practice and clients have been listening. - When a Software Bug Becomes a Legal Problem: What Businesses Should Know
- Does Your Massachusetts Police Report Go to Your Insurer?
- Legal AI – Can’t Work Without It: Why 15% of Big Law Attorneys Are Now Officially Dependent on AI
According to fresh survey data from LexisNexis UK, 15% of lawyers at large commercial law firms now admit they are completely dependent on AI to carry out their daily legal work. The reliance is almost as pronounced in corporate legal departments, where 13% of in-house counsel report identical dependency. Artificial intelligence in the legal sector has crossed the rubicon from experimental pilot project to standard operating equipment. Log in to read ., . - Why Modern Law Firms Need Smarter Access Control Systems to Protect Client Confidentiality
