INVITATION TO JOIN THE BPESA ALTERNATIVE LEGAL SERVICES THINK TANK

The global legal services marker is (arguably) valued at around USD750 billion. Whilst traditional legal activity is stagnant, the non-traditional or Alternative Legal Services (ALS) market is growing significantly; in fact the growth in the global legal services market is driven primarily by ALS.

This growth is of particular interest to South Africa who is fast establishing a global profile as a high-value, affordable offshore location. Organic growth in the global business services and BPO sector has seen an increase in high volume legal services to very niche bespoke legal solutions. To entrench this, several so-called ‘Magic Circle’ Law Firms (i.e. multi-national top tier London based Law Firms) have established delivery centres in South Africa citing the reasons above for the location selection. In addition there is growth within the domestic market where local law firms and in-house legal departments are rapidly evolving to offer integrated legal services where alternative or innovative legal activity is critical.

The result is a massive opportunity for the South African Knowledge Economy.

Opportunity

The Global Business Services (GBS) Sector Association and Trade Body BPESA, is tasked with optimising and furthering the interests of the BPO, BPS, BPM, Shared Service and Contact Centre sector in South Africa; BPESA has adopted a sector specific strategy and is committed to supporting the Alternative Legal Services Sector. To support this focus Charnell Hebrard of Channel Consult has been engaged to gather the legal community to further interrogate the substantial opportunities which seem to exist.

Successful case studies have shown that South Africa offers numerous benefits to international organisations looking to locate their GBS operations in the country showing a year on year growth of over 24% with additional benefits available to the ALS sector. With a specific focus on the UK a shared commercial, regulatory and common law legal background which provides a compelling argument for UK based law firms and legal departments of multinational corporates to place their legal processes into South African.

With this opportunity in mind, coupled with the disruptive phase business and specifically the legal sector is in, we would like to invite you to join BPESA as we further interrogate the opportunity of growing and marketing the country as a preferred ALS offshore location.

Date: 30th April 2019

Time: 12h00 – 16h00 (this time allows for participants from outside of Gauteng to travel in for the session)

Venue: InvestSA, Ground Floor, The Place, 1 Sandton Drive, Sandton (next door to the US Embassy)

The purpose of the meeting is to:

• Establish the ALS Interest Group
• Set out key objectives
• Map a way forward