KPMG Law UK is carving out a niche in the legal landscape with its unique approach to client service delivery.
The head of KPMG Law UK, Stuart Bedford, leads around 300 people in the UK across a broad range of services. As he noted, “I suspect we probably look quite similar to firms of an equivalent size in terms of what we cover.”
However, as Bedford told City A.M., the legal arm of the Big Four firm is “different from the traditional law firms”, as it offers different skillsets, a global footprint, along with technology at its core which helps to deliver cost-cuts for its clients.
The legal arm gets the majority of its work from other departments around KPMG, with the aim of providing comprehensive support to its clients.
However, Bedford—who was once a long-serving partner at Linklaters—thinks the firm’s structure provides the lawyers with a different skill set from others in the City.
Stuart Bedford, head of KPMG Law UK
He explained: “You spend way more time with the risk consultants, management consultant, strategy team, corporate finance people or with tax people learning what they do and what they deliver on.”
From that, he added that “the way you advise in the context of big projects is you learn a slightly different skillset because of the fact that you are constantly delivering alongside other professionals within KPMG.”
He noted that the firm is not looking to challenge traditional Big Law on the likes of big corporate M&A deals, however, as he points out, there is Venn diagram that overlaps with these firms and those deals. “What we do is slightly different and tends to be the sorts of projects that actually those firms don’t really focus on,” he explained.
As the larger City firms focus on the big deals, he added, “there are huge amounts of legal work in all of those projects where it really makes sense to bring” in the likes of KPMG Law.
He also lists the legal arm’s benefits, which include a “different approach” to delivering on client projects based on cutting costs.
A “very low cost team in India” helps the company keep costs low.
Other firms struggle to deliver the same value for money.
Bedford said clients: “Know what the Magic Circle and the big US are for, but…that’s not who they want to deliver because they know they don’t look at…a project in a way that delivers the best value for the client.”
Still, the firm knows it can’t provide everything for everyone. Bedford acknowledged peers may offer a better level of service in some areas, but KPMG Law’s advantage is the ability to “bring together a blend of different skills and offer that as a package to companies.”
“There are certain projects and transactions that there is a real logic to it,” he concluded.