Legal Technology Journal

Integreon has launched the first UK shared-service centre for the legal market in a £50m seven-year deal with Osborne Clarke.

The deal will see top 30 law firm Osborne Clarke transfer over 75 business services professionals and chief operating officer Chris Bull is to join Integreon as European COO as part of the deal. Head of infrastructure and IT Nathan Hayes will also join Integreon.

The centre will provide a comprehensive range of services including IT, document production and business intelligence and research. It is to be based in Bristol, where Osborne Clarke is headquartered. However, according to Integreon’s president John Croft, the location was decided before the law firm came into the picture and on the basis of independent research into the availability of educated talent and foreign language capability.

A number of Osborne Clarke’s employees will remain at their desks despite being employees of Integreon. Croft said: “Some former Osborne Clarke people will be 100% looking after Osborne Clarke but others will be developing the shared-services centre.”

Bull will oversee the management of the new centre as well as Integreon’s existing European business. Osborne Clarke’s procurement manager Rebecca Plummeridge will be in charge of monitoring the service levels provided. Behind Plummeridge will be several user groups, which have been set up to provide feedback on services, and a number of high-level strategic groups.

 Osborne Clarke’s managing partner Simon Beswick told Legal Technology Journal: “A lot of the reason why we’re doing this is we believe we’ve struck an arrangement with a group who will innovate and say ‘this is how you should change your business.’”

Los Angeles-based Integreon has offshore operations in Mumbai, Delhi and Manila and has more recently moved to provide onshore delivery centres in Fargo, North Dakota in 2006 and New York City in 2008. The UK centre will open in March.

Croft said: “The reaction [to the news] in the legal sector has been amazing – I’ve had COOs of major firms saying please can you come in and talk to me about it.”

Croft denied that the timing of the UK venture was connected to the credit crunch, commenting: “Osborne Clarke has thought about and been planning this for a good couple of years.”

However the timing has clearly worked in Integreon’s favour and Croft added: “We are where we are [economically] and many COOs are in an uncomfortable situation where fee earning is going down and costs need to be kept under control.”

Integreon started 9 years ago with 16 people in Mumbai and now employees almost 2000 people and counts law firms including Clifford Chance (CC) among its clients. In 2005, CC turned to Integreon to deal with some of its document production work out of Mumbai.