While Mallesons has cited clients as being the driver for an LPO agreement, managing partner Tony O’Malley acknowledges that not all will benefit from the offering. “This won’t appeal to all clients – there are work areas suited to it,” he said. “But, if you are a major Australian corporate and you  have a major book of litigation, and many of our clients do, then this will be very relevant as not all litigation is strategically relevant and clients are looking to keep the costs down.”

Work areas suitable for Integreon staff include due diligence, discovery, contract review, document management, M&A, dispute resolution and patent work. “It allows our lawyers and our partners to focus on our core strengths, which is doing the more complex parts of transactions and litigation for our clients, which is where we can add the most value,” said O’Malley.

However, for clients, this does come at a price. For example, while the flat rate charged by Integreon for document review will be directly passed on to the client; the cost of briefing the team working on the matter, the sharing of knowledge on the matter and supervising the matter will be charged back to clients by Mallesons. According to Mallesons director Michelle Mahoney supervision includes ensuring that the quality of work is of a high standard, keeping up to date on the matters and ensuring issues are addressed as they arise. “We have to make sure the efficiencies remain the same,” she said.

Integreon CEO Bob Gogel is quick to point out that staff at Integreon, while legally trained, are not lawyers: “All of our team will be working under the supervision of a senior lawyer from Mallesons,” he said. “We are not in the business of competing with law firms; I know some of our competitors have moved from LPO and are beginning to practice law, we think that is a strategic mistake.”

For junior lawyers this is of great importance, as the work undertaken by Integreon is regularly undertaken by junior staff in firms. “It won’t change the graduate intake at all,” said O’Malley. “There is some overlap in what the graduates do in the first six months, but not much. We don’t see this as being a factor to decrease grad numbers.”

Related story: Mallesons signs LPO agreement with Integreon

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