COVID-19 has "has intensified the need for organisations to transform," the firm says
KPMG Law has introduced a global legal operations transformation services (LOTS) offering.
The legal department transformation offering, which is being rolled out across KPMG firms, is designed to offer clients “a wide range of global strategies and cross-border capabilities to help meet the challenges they face,” the firm said. The offering aims to support GCs in adapting “to a new reality.”
“As general counsel and in-house legal teams contend with the increasing pressures facing their organisations in the wake of COVID-19, there is an urgent need to rethink delivery models and transform legal function operations,” KPMG said. “While the move to digitise and automate the legal function was already underway before COVID-19, it is now a commercial imperative, and the scope and remit is wider than before as the pandemic situation has intensified the need for organisations to transform.”
KPMG International’s global head of tax and legal services, David Linke, highlighted the evolving role of legal teams in businesses as a driver of demand for legal department transformation.
“While COVID-19 has accelerated the trends that we were already seeing for legal transformation, the post-COVID world will require legal and compliance teams to be even more efficient, even more engaged with the business and to play a key role in driving the customer experience, revenue and cash conversion cycles,” he said. “Never has a global and integrated approach to transformation been more in demand than in the current climate. KPMG professionals are focused on bringing the best of our global capabilities, expertise and solutions to legal departments. ”
The global LOTS practice leadership team comprises Andreas Bong (legal process and technology co-head, Germany), Nicola Brooks (director of KPMG Law UK, London), Philipp Glock (legal process and technology co-head, Germany), Eric Gorman (LOTS head, US), Kimberly Tan Majure (principal, US) and David Murray (partner, Hong Kong).
“These leaders are supported by their team members in country firms, and professionals across the global organisation, including MBAs, lawyers, legal technologists, data scientists and specialists in operational excellence,” KPMG said. “Their diverse and complementary skillsets, and combined experience, unite under KPMG’s global methodology to provide significant value to clients.”
Altogether, the LOTS team has over 14 years of credentials and experience in legal transformation, having worked with multinationals in financial services, asset management, automotive, insurance and consumer goods. KPMG International global legal services head Stuart Fuller said that in addition to being “senior and experienced,” the practice leaders span different regions, making the offering a truly global one.
“I believe KPMG’s global legal operations transformation services teams are ‘global,’ both in terms of the geographic coverage but also the strategies offered,” he said. “’Practice leaders are senior, experienced, and work together in KPMG firms across Europe, the Americas and the Asia Pacific region. They have a laser focus on results, and they are delivering significant and measurable improvement for legal functions across KPIs, such as productivity, customer satisfaction and quality measures – results that are crucial for organisations in the current climate.”
Fuller said the firm was capitalising on the strengths of not just its legal and technology arms, but on the strengths of its professionals across firms, including “Lean Six Sigma, human-centred design and systems thinking.”
“Together, our organisation has achieved a substantial track record of implementing and running the transformation opportunities that we identify,” he said. “The new legal operations transformation service enables KPMG firms to handle large-scale business in a more efficient and technologically-enabled way and is only the first in a number of capabilities and services that we plan to provide in this space.”
