Alex Hamilton
London headquartered managed legal services boutique Radiant Law has entered into a joint venture with Toronto-based flexi legal resource provider Conduit Law, in which Radiant’s processes and technology will be applied to help clients in the North American market handle their commercial contracts in a more efficient way.
Conduit, which was acquired by Deloitte in 2016 but became independent again in October 2017 (in order – founder Peter Carayiannis said at the time – to scale faster and be more agile), provides on demand lawyers to support clients on a project basis.
It has recently been working together with Radiant for a US client but the pair have now formalised that arrangement with the creation of a jointly-owned US entity called ConRad, which has been formed as a 50-50 Delaware corporation.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Radiant’s founder and CEO Alex Hamilton said: “Radiant has processes and technology in order to change the way that you do contracts and we work for major corporates in the Radiant way, but we have found that you have to be in the time zone to conduct a negotiation.
“We worked recently with Conduit for a client and thought ‘why not bring the Radiant methodology and combine it with Conduit to target the US legal market?’” Radiant’s large corporate clients include Sky and the London Stock Exchange.
All of the work done by ConRad will be for a fixed price. Radiant, which also has an office in Cape Town, does not use the billable hour for any of its work.
In terms of why ‘the Radiant way’ is worth exporting, it creates playbooks and automates contracts and processes as standard. The business is one of the few legal outfits that sells its own software: as first revealed by this publication, in 2017 it launched homegrown Word toolkit RemarkableX, which clients pay for on a subscription basis.
The law firm is one of the handpicked few to feature in Mitchell Kowalski’s book The Great Legal Reformation, which drills down into organisations that practice in an innovative way.
It’s not all about technology: Hamilton tells Legal IT Insider: “One thing we do is what we call the continuous improvement process, where at the beginning of every quarter we agree with clients the key improvement projects for that quarter, whether that be automating documents or building a playbook or adding a new service line, and we report ‘here are the key things from this quarter’. We report relentlessly: it’s always got to get better.”
In a statement out on 17 July Carayiannis said: “In-house counsel across North America are facing a complex set of challenges which is ultimately driving demand for more flexible and value-driven legal support.
“I hear every day from local, national and international organisations who want to join the conversation about new approaches to taming contracts and increasing their capacity to focus on business priorities. The opportunity to work with Radiant Law immediately enhances our ability to explore a new model for meeting their needs and to serve these clients. In addition to helping clients, it has been terrific to work with a like-minded team of professionals in the London and Cape Town offices of Radiant.”