Reynolds Porter Chamberlain is launching a new management consultancy business for the insurance sector.
The firm has hired Rory O'Brien, former head of risk consulting at Towers Watson, to launch the offshoot. With just one hire the venture is unlikely to be troubling McKinsey just yet. But RPC is clearly serious about it - O'Brien is being taken on as a partner and will sit on RPC's Management Board. And the firm is not alone in trying to tap budgets beyond just legal spend. Schillings for example realised that it could make a lot money obtaining injunctions for stupid, rich, badly behaved people and now markets itself as a "reputation and privacy consultancy". Its turnover went up 30% last year.
A spokesman for RPC told RollOnFriday there was no reason why law firms should restrict themselves just to law when they could become more generic trusted advisers. When RollOnFriday pointed out that even the best run law firms were about a decade behind most corporates when it came to cutting edge business practice, he explained convincingly that a number of people at RPC came from accountancy or management consultancy backgrounds, so the firm had a better chance of making a decent fist of it than most.
The Big Four accountancy firms have been playing in this field for years, and if RPC can muscle in on it other firms will be watching with interest.
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The firm has hired Rory O'Brien, former head of risk consulting at Towers Watson, to launch the offshoot. With just one hire the venture is unlikely to be troubling McKinsey just yet. But RPC is clearly serious about it - O'Brien is being taken on as a partner and will sit on RPC's Management Board. And the firm is not alone in trying to tap budgets beyond just legal spend. Schillings for example realised that it could make a lot money obtaining injunctions for stupid, rich, badly behaved people and now markets itself as a "reputation and privacy consultancy". Its turnover went up 30% last year.
A spokesman for RPC told RollOnFriday there was no reason why law firms should restrict themselves just to law when they could become more generic trusted advisers. When RollOnFriday pointed out that even the best run law firms were about a decade behind most corporates when it came to cutting edge business practice, he explained convincingly that a number of people at RPC came from accountancy or management consultancy backgrounds, so the firm had a better chance of making a decent fist of it than most.
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Someone who knows less about your business than you being paid £10,000 a day to tell you how to run it |
The Big Four accountancy firms have been playing in this field for years, and if RPC can muscle in on it other firms will be watching with interest.
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You only have to look at how many lawyers are NEDs on corporate boards to see how vital and valued their contribution to business thinking is.