At Ontra, we believe the most effective way to serve enterprise customers is to deliver a comprehensive, global solution to a legal outsourcing problem. This belief was central in our decision to set up dedicated operations in Europe by opening an office in London.
By doing so, we’re able to provide our end-to-end solution for negotiating and managing routine legal work to a greater number of companies across Europe. This milestone also represents an important step forward in our quest to deliver a truly seamless global solution to our large enterprise clients, with plans to work in all major legal markets in Europe and open an office in Asia-Pacific by year-end. Our expansion also creates valuable corporate legal work opportunities for highly experienced lawyers who are seeking a flexible work arrangement.
What factors played into the expansion, and who did we select to run our new international operations? Read on for the details.
Why the expansion?
From the beginning, many of our global clients have said that when it comes to negotiating and managing routine legal work, they experience the same pain points in their European divisions as they do in the U.S. They’re generally stuck choosing between two imperfect options: sending the work to a traditional law firm (and paying high rates for it to be handled by junior, generalist lawyers) or trying to find the right internal staff to effectively handle the work, ultimately taking focus away from the core aspects of their jobs.
Outsourcing legal work to Ontra’s network of highly experienced legal network members working on our cloud-based platform offers a best-in-class solution that can help large companies streamline processes, free up resources, and save money.
London was the natural choice for our first European office because it’s widely regarded as a business and legal hub of Europe.
According to Research and Markets’ Legal Services Global Market Report 2017, the U.K. was the largest European legal market in 2016, accounting for about $45 billion or 7% of the global market. From a business perspective, London hosts 40% of the European headquarters of the world’s top companies, according to Deloitte.
Based on these numbers, it’s clear that London is home to an abundant number of companies that are considering legal outsourcing and that could benefit from our end-to-end solution for negotiating and managing routine legal work.
Ontra’s London leader
Once we set our sights on establishing operations in London, we had to find the right person to run our new office. We sought a leader with deep experience in corporate and international law based in London and attuned to the European legal landscape.
Our search led us to Bridget Deiters. Bridget joins Ontra as managing director, U.K. Prior to Ontra, Bridget practiced corporate and capital markets law at Kirkland & Ellis and Cravath in London. Bridget holds a J.D. from Georgetown and a B.A. from Yale, and she brings extensive international legal experience to our company.
Looking forward
We couldn’t be more excited about the increased value that our European expansion will allow us to bring to our large enterprise clients. With our London presence established, we welcome the opportunity to spread our best-in-class solution to other large companies throughout Europe.
With increased access to a wider international audience, we’ll continue to grow our network of remote lawyers by providing a uniquely flexible yet steady work arrangement. As we aim to open our first office in Asia-Pacific by year-end, we foresee even more growth in both our legal network and the volume of enterprises with access to our offering, putting us well on our way to providing clients with a truly global offering wherever they operate.
