Elite has let go of three members of its senior leadership team including head of global support Patrick Hurley, who one customer described to Legal IT Insider as the face of Elite in Europe.
The three affected people are chief technology officer Eric Sugden; practice lead for Elite Global Delivery Services Derek Kelly; and Hurley. Sugden and Kelly are US-based, while Hurley is based in the UK.
Sugden was the longstanding CTO of Thomson Reuters Elite and last year was reappointed to that role after Elite’s acquisition by private equity house TPG. He is described as setting the technology vision for Elite as well as leading the software engineering and technology teams. He will be replaced by incoming Elite CTO John Machado. Kelly, meanwhile, joined Thomson Reuters Elite in 2017 as global business director of its automotive practice group before joining legal professional services in 2021 as a senior director. He helped to lead the earlier transformation efforts at Thomson Reuters.
Where many US-headquartered legal technology companies such as Elite struggle to make headway in Europe, customers say that Hurley can be credited with being the face of the organisation. Stuart Whittle, chief technology and innovation officer of Weightmans, said: “Personally, I’ll be sorry to see Patrick leave Elite. He was a real asset to the organisation throughout its various incarnations. As far as I’m concerned, Patrick was always the face of Elite in Europe. He’s always been a consummate professional and has commanded a lot of respect in the market because of his integrity and commitment to customers over the years.”
Janet Day, former director of technology and infrastructure services at BLP (now BCLP) and now an independent legal technology consultant, said: “Patrick has been Elite’s life saver in Europe and if you needed someone to fix something or connect you with someone, you’d call Patrick. He has enabled Elite to succeed in Europe, and Elite may not have understood the value that Patrick continues to bring to the market.”
With regard to all three respected individuals a spokesperson for Elite said: “As you know, we’re evolving to become a SaaS company and experiencing rapid growth. Like any business, we need to make sure that we’re looking at our business and leadership needs, and the changes announced internally are part of our need to evolve our leadership structure.
“The business is evolving and we want to scale our software and help customers move to the cloud. Customers are getting on the train looking for new technology like AI and we’re making sure that we’re aligning our resources to those needs.”
These cuts, announced at the start of this week, follow two successive redundancy rounds across the business. Asked by Legal IT Insider if customers will struggle with a lack of continuity internally, the spokesperson said: “We have maintained a lot of roles. Elisabet Hardy has been with the company many years and we’re excited that her role has expanded to become chief product officer. We have other leaders like [vice president of sales in EMEA and APAC] Duncan Hannigan and we are maintaining continuity but it’s a case of looking at our growth strategy and our customer needs and aligning our resources to those needs.”
caroline@legaltechnology.com
I have known Patrick for a long time, having worked for Thomson Elite (later Thomson Reuters) for 17 years, and I always referred to him as “the nicest man at Elite.”
For a little while, he was my mentor, and I learned much from him about building trust relationships with clients. I think the new Elite regime has made a BIG mistake in letting go of him – but I can see how Patrick’s approach to the job might not fit in with the profit-focused business philosophy of TPG and the new leadership it has installed at Elite.
I think Elite will miss Derek Kelly and Eric Sugden too – I worked closely with Derek for a large digital transformation project, and he is an excellent leader and manager. I also had some contact with Eric, both when I was a 3E consultant and later in my role as a senior manager in 3E Cloud status meetings, and I always respected his pragmatism and his depth of experience.
It’s a shame to see these talented people leave Elite, but you can bet they will all land on their feet!