American Lawyer chief European correspondent Chris Johnson meets regularly with senior figures in the legal world at their favorite breakfast joints to chew over the industry's tastiest talking points. Johnson's guest this week is John Bennett, international business partner at Berwin Leighton Paisner. On the menu: the U.K. firm’s client outsourcing initiative, Managed Legal Services.
Berwin Leighton Paisner likes to do things a little differently. Whether it's a sustained policy of aggressive lateral hiring—its pioneering Moscow launch in 2009 saw it acquire a 70-lawyer team from a leading Russian firm, including the name partner—or a willingness to rethink the way in which it provides legal services, the 800-lawyer London-based outfit has in recent years developed a strong reputation for strategic proactivity. Former BLP corporate partner Simon Harper was named by The American Lawyer last month as one of the legal market’s 50 top innovators of the past 50 years for his work in establishing its Lawyers on Demand (LoD) initiative, which provides a pool of more than 120 freelance attorneys, backed by BLP training and support, that clients can use to temporarily bolster their legal function.
