Deloitte snags Shoosmith's Real Estate team​

By Jake Rickman
Image credit - Casimiro PT / Shutterstock.com​

What do you need to know this week?

January is often a slow month in business and law as client activity thaws following the Christmas slowdown. However, January is a popular month for announcing promotions and team moves, as evidenced by Deloitte’s announcement on Monday that it has snagged four partners from Shoosmiths’ highly praised real estate group.

The move means Deloitte now has a real estate practice, which, according to The Lawyer, will be based in Manchester.

Why is this important for your interviews?

Following reforms brought on by the Legal Services Act 2007, business entities owned by non-qualified solicitors were now able to undertake legal services. This enabled professional advisory firms like Deloitte and the other Big Four (KPMG, EY, and PwC) to compete with traditional law firms. Nearly sixteen years on, Deloitte’s acquisition of Shoosmiths, a highly respected UK firm with an eminent real estate practice, demonstrates the threat these alternative business structures (ABSs) pose.

From the client’s perspective, professional service firms with proper legal divisions means the client can (in theory) obtain tax, accounting, strategy, and legal advice from a single service provider. Though in practice, there are thorny conflicts of interest and regulatory hurdles that have some of the Big Four moving away from a one-stop shop model.

But given the ascendency of US firms operating in the UK market in the past decade, this means that UK firms are doubly squeezed by the competitors. This is especially true for firms with an outsized presence advising on mid-market transactions, as this is the market segment where the ABSs are most aggressively moving into.

Discussing this development in the context of external threats facing UK-headquartered firms will help signal to interviewers that you appreciate the business context in which law firms operate and the threats traditional firms face.

Viewed from another perspective, this development also signals that the Big Four are staying competitive in the ceaseless battle for senior talent. No doubt, Deloitte would have had to put forward a most compelling offer to entice four of Shoosmiths’ senior partners away. Ultimately, this translates into more headcount for junior positions, as the ABSs seek to bulk out their legal practice groups to facilitate deal flow.

All of the Big Four offer their own training contracts, which means you could pursue a successful career in law from start to finish having never worked in a traditional firm.