Mundae: More specialism planned
City giant Linklaters is aiming to have half of its over alternative legal services (ALS) staff, who currently number over 100, working remotely, it has emerged.
Jas Mundae, director of ALS, said that having staff working remotely across the UK rather than at regional hubs would enable the law firm to recruit wherever it wanted.
Linklaters’ ALS team includes paralegals, support lawyers, legal project managers, legal tech professionals and contract lawyers.
Ms Mundae said the ALS offering had been redesigned and rebranded as ‘Limitless’. Launched earlier this month, the development of more specialist roles will be a feature of Limitless.
She said one example was the recent appointment of an e-discovery senior tech lead to advise on issues such as different tech platforms for different cases and the role of machine learning.
Ms Mundae said the future would see more specialism as well, with e-discovery experts focusing on investigations, High Court litigation or arbitration so they were more closely aligned with the law firm’s practice teams.
Limitless is described as a “fully location agnostic model”. Ms Mundae said the focus on remote working would “attract business talent without the limitations of geography”, and some staff were already working from the Lake District or Yorkshire.
Not every role would be suitable for remote working, but staff based in London could already work on a hybrid basis under Linklaters’ agile working policy.
Ms Mundae said remote working would also be beneficial for diversity and inclusion and, in terms of social mobility, could help people who might not be able to afford to commute long distances.
She said the ALS team had already used remote induction programmes and had training strategies in place that were developed during the pandemic for staff who worked remotely.
The technology used by Limitless would be ‘best in class’, whether it was early case assessment software, an e-discovery platform or AI-enabled due diligence review tool.
Where necessary Limitless could partner with legal process outsourcers, the goal being to save time and drive efficiencies for clients. Pricing solutions were flexible and could, where appropriate, “deviate from the billable hour”.
It also has professionally qualified legal project managers and the Re:link network of contract lawyers.
Paul Lewis, managing partner of Linklaters, commented: “The world of work changed radically as a result of the pandemic and our Limitless model embraces the new way in which many talented people wish to work.
“They are not limited by geography; they don’t need to live in a hub such as Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds or Cardiff. And we are not limited in the talent we can harness for our clients. This offering promotes agility, promotes diversity and promotes talent.”
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