Herbert Smith Freehills will move towards a single CEO model, but no decision has been made yet as to when this will occur or who the CEO will be, Freehills CEO Gavin Bell has told ALB. Bell said that media reports that Herbert Smith managing partner David Willis would step aside after a transitional period to allow Bell to take the reins were incorrect. "No decision has been made yet," he said.
Herbert Smith has a document review and legal process facility in Belfast and Bell said that Freehills would be interested in exploring the possibility of using this facility for lower end work. Freehills currently does not have any formal alliances with legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) providers and has instead invested in technology to facilitate tasks such as document review and due diligence in its Sydney and Melbourne offices. The preferred position at Freehills is for such tasks to be undertaken with close supervision by lawyers and for this reason, this work is unlikely to be completely outsourced to Belfast or elsewhere.
Freehills recorded 11 percent revenue growth last year, a result which has been partly attributed to practices such as workplace relations and offices such as Brisbane, which has had 20 percent growth in each of the past three years. However, Bell noted that the result needed to be understood in the context of the entire firm and not just in relation to these teams, which each comprised about 10 percent of the firm. "The transactional work has held up too - the whole firm has been busy," he said.
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