Legal managed services business Factor has appointed former Credit Suisse co-general counsel of investment banking Jonathan Pedersen as executive vice president, global practice lead, to oversee client engagement across all its teams globally.
The heavyweight hire comes as Factor focuses on distancing itself from its legal outsourcing background, which it says does not do justice to the complex work that it undertakes for clients currently. It also reflects an ambition to win more high-end professional services work, leveraging its ability to become embedded in clients’ workflow for contracting work, which it refers to as ‘integrated law’. Integrated law is a combination of traditional law expertise, the efficiency (thanks in large part to tech) of new law, and the business alignment of in-house law.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Factor’s head of strategy, Chris DeConti said: “We’re bringing together legal expertise, new law and in-house law, because that’s the recurring transactional work we do for clients. It needs the legal expertise and credibility of a law firm, in addition to the efficiency of new law, given that this work is at scale and cost is an object. Finally, it needs in-house business alignment because it happens right at the intersection of business and legal, with stakeholders up and downstream, including finance and risk people, and you can’t do this work in isolation.
“It is not suited to the outsourcing model, where you throw the work over the transom, and it get thrown back. Our team are in contact with in-house teams and working within their firewall and taking part in their business processes, which is what is required by stakeholders up and down the chain.”
Pederson’s remit will be to engage with clients and ensure that all of Factor’s teams are prioritising client objectives. Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Pederson said: “The first thing is to drive a real focus on client orientation. In a big organisation it’s easy to get inwardly focussed on things and I want to make sure that everyone is focussed on what the client wants and what their objectives are and making sure that we keep that top of mind.”
Pederson has been a Factor client for a number of years and observed: “We have brainstormed with them at some length about a number of projects and I thought, from the GC perspective, they were solving an incredibly important problem. As a GC, how do you manage day-to-day contracting in a large organisation with the kind of rigour, control and risk management that you need in place? How do you manage that at scale when you have a relatively small senior legal team who are dealing with the regulatory challenges of the day, and all kinds of other things are capturing your attention?
“Enterprises like Factor bring the capability for a GC to get their arms around that problem efficiently and cost effectively but also so that you know what people are doing so that you can sleep at night. They put in place processes so you know what is going on and you can extract useful data, which reduces cost and drives efficiency. That is the service that we can deliver.”
Versions of Pederson’s role have existed in the past, however head of strategy Chris de Conti told Legal IT Insider: “Jon’s appointment represents a significant shift in the profile of the person we have had in that role. In the past, we have had people with a strong senior background from the likes of Accenture or big multi-industry outsourcing background, but over the last couple of years, we’ve had a recognition that that isn’t who we really are. The sort of work we get doesn’t fit that outsourcing model, it’s more akin to high end professional services, so we looked to law firm partners and GCs to fill the role, which is more reflective of where we’re going.”
Factor has a core tech stack that includes contract lifecycle management provider Agiloft, but it also has what DeConti describes as a catalogue of the strengths and weaknesses of client systems and he says: “We have developed expertise around plugging into client systems and using our tools not in a vacuum, but in the context of the security protocols and specific requirements of clients.”
He adds: “We can often find a tool that a client is using somewhere in the company that meets security protocols and is compatible. We are tech-agnostic with an emphasis on functionality rather than being wedded to specific tools, given how hard it can be to plug in.”
In a statement out today (21 July), Factor’s CEO Varun Mehta said: “The market has responded enthusiastically to our focus on complex legal work at scale. Our clients entrust us with this higher-value work, enabling them to focus on the vitally important, recurring advisory work only in-house teams can provide.
“[Jon’s] experience spanning traditional law firms, in-house and legal innovation made him uniquely qualified to help bring Integrated Law to life. Jon has lived in the shoes of our in-house clients and practiced law at the highest levels. His reverence for quality and client outcomes has distinguished him throughout his career.”
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