Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

This week's announcement that Big Four accounting firm Ernst & Young has purchased London-based alternative legal services provider, Riverview Law, has law firms doing plenty of hand-wringing.

But without the interest of clients—the present and future purchasers of Big Four legal services—the much-feared threat from the EYs and Deloittes of the world wouldn't quite seem so scary.

Those on the client side told Corporate Counsel that the Riverview acquisition, the first Big Four purchase of an established legal-managed services provider, is in fact piquing their interest. And they are by no means surprised by this initial Big Four foray into ASPs.

“This is good for the legal industry and clients. Clients are increasingly in need of efficient, flexible service providers of every stripe—accounting, payroll processing, legal—especially for process-heavy work that can be made more efficient (or be outright done) by technology,” Amit Khanna, general counsel of office space startup Knotel, said in an email.

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The purchase of Riverview Law means that EY will now own the managed service provider's manpower and technology, which includes new dashboard and matter tracking capabilities for legal departments and contract management solutions. The acquisition also ramps up the number of lawyers working for EY globally to a total of 2,200 in 81 jurisdictions.

Khanna said in the email that if EY can package Riverview's capabilities with its current services, it will be a “boon for clients.”

“I also think the idea of legal service providers being owned and operated only by lawyers is narrow-minded and dated,” Khanna said, adding that Knotel has actually considered starting or acquiring a captive law firm of its own to service the company's internal legal needs more efficiently.

Connie Brenton, the director of legal operations at NetApp Inc. and CEO of Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC), said in an email that this week's EY announcement is merely the “tip of the iceberg.”

“We are no longer talking about what is coming, as these changes have arrived. They are here. Now they are simply growing in scope and in size,” she said. “The total legal available market coupled with the current transformation to how legal services are delivered make[s] the legal industry highly attractive to not only the Big Four but to technology providers, law companies, alternative legal providers as well as to private equity companies and venture capitalists.”

Brenton said that every week she's seen some kind of merger or acquisition related to an advancement or revolution in the legal industry.

EY hasn't been the only Big Four firm to make waves. In June, Deloitte announced an alliance with the U.S. immigration law firm Berry Appleman & Leiden. Deloitte U.K. also acquired the firm's non-U.S. business that extends throughout more than eight different countries.

Legal departments are paying attention, but whether or not the Riverview acquisition and the expansion of the Big Four will actually inspire general counsel to give these service providers more business remains to be seen.

“Legal operations executives and GCs moving work to the Big Four will depend on how the Big Four continue to scale and what their engagement models look like,” wrote Brenton. “There are others within the legal ecosystem that are larger and have a more broad offering, like Axiom, Elevate, Integreon, Quislex and UnitedLex and have extensive experience providing offerings and easy engagement models.”