The former leaders of managed legal services provider Carillion Advice Services (CAS) have reunited to launch NuCAS Managed Legal Services, which will combine legal expertise and technology to help law firms and in-house teams with their day-to-day work.
Lucy Nixon and Richard Tapp have reunited to create a business largely operating out of Newcastle, in the North of England, leveraging the strong talent pool and lower costs in the City. Early client wins include Numatic International, the makers of Henry Hoover, which turns over circa £250m in revenue.
Tapp is the former company secretary and director of legal services of Carillion, who as long ago as 2012 launched CAS to help Carillion tackle the huge volume of work it was experiencing. Nixon was head of department and director of CAS, which was a market disruptor. It was acquired by Clifford Chance when Carillion declared insolvency in 2017, and Nixon ran the business in Newcastle until last year.
NuCAS has secured seed investment from Crasner Ventures, a venture platform focussed on investment in the legal, technology and recruitment sectors and run by legal head hunter Nick Crasner.
We asked Tapp and Nixon what their modus operandi and USP is in this busy market, including how they will be leveraging technology.
Please can you let us know a bit more about the make up and size of the team you’re going to be providing?
We are starting with a strong senior team initially and aim to grow to a similar size as our other businesses. We see a lot of opportunity and unmet demand in the market – we are really excited about where we can take NuCAS. There is an abundance of talent in Newcastle, and we will recruit to meet demand – we have scaled business very successfully in the past. We know the type of people we are looking for, how to train and support them to get the best out of them.
Where are they coming from?
Newcastle has two great universities, so there is a strong talent pool in the city. There are also several legal employers in the area (this has increased significantly in last 5-10years) which is also helping to create a thriving talent pool of experienced legal professionals.
Where will they be based?
The majority of the team will be based in Newcastle and this will be our core.
How will you ensure they are an extension of law firm’s teams?
We will establish a dedicated delivery team for each client, with specialist knowledge tailored to their needs. The team will be familiar with client requirements and preferences and will understand how they like to do things. We have found that, as hybrid/remote working is standard practice, we can deliver our service very well remotely . Additionally, we spend a lot of time at our clients offices at the start, to build relationships and trust. We know from past experience that our straightforward and friendly approach enables us to seamlessly slot into teams and work alongside lawyers really effectively.
How will you ensure you have sufficient resource?
The key to delivering an excellent service is having a strong senior team to supervise and support the wider team – we can then recruit the wider team to meet demand. We already have strong relationships with universities and agencies in the region to facilitate this.
What sort of work will they be doing?
As we will be working for both in-house and law firm clients, we will be doing a wide range of work from reviewing and negotiating contacts, compliance and secretariat support, corporate due diligence, litigation support and employment tribunal work and large regulatory projects. We can apply our model to most types of legal work – we know how to “unbundle” the work that can be completed more efficiently by our model and have over 20 years’ experience of doing this.
You mention you are leveraging AI, how?
AI is a key part of our offering – we have seen firsthand how it can revolutionise legal services. We will use AI to help us run our operations, automating our workflows and processes– we are starting from a blank page, so are able to incorporate appropriate AI from the beginning. In terms of legal work, we have applied tech and AI to multiple work types and practice areas in the past and will continue to do so. When we use AI to support legal work, it is always supervised by experienced professionals, as this ensures accuracy, quality and alignment with client expectations.
Our approach is to be tech agnostic – we will use the right tool for the job and focus on helping our clients to drive adoption and ensure they get the maximum impact from deploying the tool.
We are ahead of the game in terms of effectively using AI – we have been drafting prompts and instructions for paralegals for 20 years – these are perfect for agentic AI. We are experts at defining how the task gets done – which is the key to getting the most out of AI. Our AI native paralegals really do know how to use them the best.
Why would firms use you over and above another venture?
What makes us different is our holistic approach. We don’t just offer technology or staffing solutions, we co-create tailored, end-to-end solutions with each client. By blending deep legal expertise, proven processes and the most advance technology, we deliver results that are faster, more efficient and more cost effective then those of most conventional providers.
We have so much experience – we know what works and what doesn’t – we have the scars. Almost every lawyer we have worked with.. started by saying yes, we love your model and approach, but it won’t help us with the work we do as what we do is very bespoke!! Yet almost every time we have been able to unpick work and deliver it better, cheaper, and faster.
We know change is hard. We’ve seen great projects fail due to fear or lack of internal support. But we know it’s possible and we’ve also seen what happens when it works — and it’s transformative. That’s why we built NuCAS as an independent business: to serve both in-house teams and law firms.
Our thanks and best wishes to Nixon and Tapp, who was among the first to demand that Carillion’s law firm panel communicated and shared work between them in the most cost effective way.