In a major move by consultancies in the global legal markets, Big 4 consultant EY has gobbled up legal process outsourcer (LPO) Pangea3 from Thomson Reuters, which had bought the then-India-headquartered LPO in 2010 for up to $40m from its founders.

While Pangea3 did not (and still does not, to the best of our knowledge) offer Indian law advice and it has significant US operations, the majority of its legal workforce is probably still based in India, having made it a major recruiter of Indian law graduates. The acquisition will, at the very least, give EY a major platform to compete on costs with global international law firms (whose lunch the Big 4 accountancy firms have been eating for a while now, with footprints big enough to compete with global law firms on size alone).

And while the buzz of the early days around LPOs has died down, that’s primarily so because LPO and captive LPOs owned by global law firms, have become such a routine part of global legal services now.

International Big Law should be worried, argued AboveTheLaw. And perhaps, Indian law firm lawyers are too, judging by the Silf complaint against the Big 4.

That said, at least for the time being, the Big 4 are still using law firms in their corporate expansion plans rather than each other.

L&L Partners, in this case, advised EY led by a team of partners William Vivian John and Lokesh Shah, managing associate Mayank Aggarwal, senior associate Rishabh Shah, associates Tanaya Sanyal and Gayatri Loomba; partner Gunjan Mishra advised on STPI and indirect tax matters.

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP advised EY.

Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas advised Thomson Reuters.

Latham Watkins was global legal counsel for Thomson Reuters.

2019-04-03

Deal value: Confidential

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Photo by Mark Anderson.