Luminance’s CEO Emily Foges is joining Deloitte Legal to head its growing legal managed services business. Her hire follows the recent arrival of former TalkTalk Technology general counsel and Riverview Law head of managed services and projects, Sonia Williamson, who joined in March as a director to build Deloitte Legal’s contract management capability. Foges will be replaced at Luminance by acting CEO Jason Brennan, who joined last June from Epiq as president of the Americas.
Foges is joining the Deloitte Legal team to expand its existing LMS capabilities. It currently offers a range of services across all stages of the contract lifecycle, from negotiation and data extraction to scale remediation. As one of the Big Four advisers, Deloitte’s strategy is to provide a multi-disciplinary offering for clients that are seeking tax, financial, risk and cyber security advice.
Foges joins in June after four years as CEO of Luminance Technologies. Prior to this, she also led complex strategic change and technical integration programmes for Equifax and Betfair, as well as M&A consulting and product development across the retail sector.
Michael Castle, managing partner for Deloitte Legal in the UK & North South Europe commented: “Emily is a proven leader and business builder with more than 20 years’ experience developing and growing technology-led businesses for well-known brands. Emily has a wealth of knowledge about how to transform the ways in which lawyers work and the ways in which legal services are delivered. This combination of experience and knowledge will be instrumental as we take our Legal Managed Services offering to the next level. Her desire to create new services that the market has never seen before goes hand-in-hand with Deloitte Legal’s ambition to provide clients with new solutions to legal problems.
“The legal market has been under pressure to do ‘more for less’ for some time now. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbates this challenge with legal functions having to resolve unprecedented, complex problems in short timeframes, whilst at the same time becoming more efficient.”
Emily Foges said: “Legal teams are under immense pressure to deliver more with fewer resources.
“One example is the sheer volume of corporate and personal data, which is now so vast that normally routine tasks, such as document review, have become too labour-intensive and onerous for time-constrained, high-skilled legal practitioners.
“I have always recognised the value in collaborating with experts with a range of skillsets in order to solve complex problems. Deloitte’s multidisciplinary offering, spanning the professional services spectrum, is a key differentiator for unlocking efficiency bottlenecks for legal functions. This will enable teams to focus on more strategic issues, reducing operational risks and removing constraints to business growth.”
Williamson, meanwhile, qualified as a solicitor with Eversheds in 2002. She moved in-house and from 2008 was General Counsel (GC) for TalkTalk Technology. In 2014 she joined Riverview Law where she rose to Head of Managed Services and Projects, continuing in that role after Riverview’s acquisition by EY in 2018. During this time, she optimised the contract management process and her role at Deloitte Legal is to build and lead the practice’s Contract Management capability, helping clients outsource day-to-day contract management with a specific focus on commercial, corporate, employment and real estate contracts.
She will also support Deloitte’s existing business which has a strong track record of helping clients navigate regulatory challenges through large-scale remediation support, as well as deploying scalable technology such as dTrax, an award-winning, proprietary contract management tool.
Williamson said: “Deloitte Legal is a fantastic team with a passion to deliver outstanding services in the field of alternative legal services. I’m looking forward to helping clients transform their ways of working with the support of our Legal Managed Service and associated legal technology solutions.”
Castle added: “Sonia is another key addition to our ambitious Deloitte Legal team and brings with her an excellent blend of experiences, combining time in private practice, first-hand knowledge of the challenges of a GC and a proven track record of building and leading a managed services offering.
Deloitte Legal has now grown to more than 250 people in the UK, delivering technology-enabled legal solutions in areas such as employment, litigation, corporate and commercial and immigration, including more than 85 client-facing practicing lawyers.