Deloitte has poached one of Baker & McKenzie's senior lawyers, but the accounting giant promises that it has no ulterior motive of reviving the notion of a full scale interdisciplinary legal practice in Australia. 

Rita Chowdhury joins Deloitte after 13 years at Baker & McKenzie, where she established the firm’s  immigration practice. She joins Deloitte as a specialist immigration partner, providing mobility and workforce management solutions for clients. It’s a reminder of the overlap which still exists between the services provided by law firms and accounting and broad practice professional service firms.

Mark Wright, global leader of Deloitte’s immigration practice, told ALB that the practice of law was a “major area of activity” for accounting/professional service firms.  He said that for Deloitte in Australia, the key areas of focus were tax litigation and immigration.  This represented a targeted approach to the provision of legal services, as distinct from a full service law firm model.  He added that the firm’s bolstering of its immigration practice was not the start of a broader legal diversification for Deloitte in Australia.

“Not at all,” he said. “The decision to bring someone of Rita’s quality into the firm [complements] nicely the emphasis that we place on that particular area of law within Deloitte.  But a wider movement  into the legal area…. Rita’s [appointment] has nothing to do with that.”

Chowdhury said that law firms and accounting firms present very different work environments. “It’s completely different, like night and day,” she said. “Firstly in times of scale and size… Deloitte is perhaps five or six times the size of Baker & McKenzie in Sydney so that’s been a new experience. One thing that’s really struck me are the incredible processes and technology that Deloitte has in place - leading edge processes and technology that you really need to have in an organisation of this scale. It’s is also interesting to work with a diverse range of professionals. Law firms are very homogenous; everyone’s a lawyer but here you have people of all sorts of different backgrounds and expertise. I’m really enjoying my time here.”