Pinsent Masons has hired a nine-strong IP team from Deloitte Legal, including three partners and a legal director, in a big expansion of its London IP team.
While a significant win for Pinsents, the move highlights more instability in the Big Four’s legal offerings.
Pinsent Masons has moved for a nine-strong team of IP lawyers from Deloitte in the latest blow to the Big Four firm’s increasingly fragile legal operations in the UK.
The team joins Pinsents’ London office, and consists of three partners, Paul Garland, Rachel Barber and Jeremy Harris, legal director Richard Reeve-Young, and five associates.
Garland was Deloitte Legal’s global head of IP and technology, and one of its most senior legal figures. Barber specialises in design, trademark and copyright matters for retail and luxury brands, while Harris, brings a broad practice spanning IP disputes and licensing transactions.
Garland and Barber also co-founded Dupe Killer, an AI-powered tool for identifying imitation and counterfeit items online. Deloitte acquired the tool in 2021 as part of its acquisition of tech-focused firm Kemp Little (doubling the size of its legal arm). Pinsents offers its own legal tech tool for managing and monitoring IP online, named Alteria.
What they said
Tom Nener, co-head of Pinsents' IP practice, said the move "represents a significant expansion of our IP practice, particularly in the brand protection and technology space. With technological development disrupting traditional IP strategies, these hires position us to execute increasingly complex global work on behalf of high-profile brands and leading technology clients".
Fellow co-head Judith Krens added: "The team’s emphasis on enforcement means they are poised to leverage our suite of Alteria products on behalf of clients to monitor a brand’s IP and reputation online and remove threats as soon as they occur".
Round two
It's not the first time Pinsents has poached from Deloitte’s senior ranks. In January last year, it lured two technology-focused partners, Paul Hinton and Ed Baker, to its London office. Both partners remain at the firm.
Significantly, all five partners taken by Pinsents in the two raids joined Deloitte through its 2021 acquisition of Kemp Little - a sign that what was then hailed as a "key moment" by Deloitte hasn’t quite delivered as planned.
Bigger picture
The departures once again underscore the difficulty the Big Four have faced holding on to top legal talent.
In 2018, Deloitte became the last of the quartet to take advantage of the Legal Services Act 2007, which allowed non-lawyers to own and manage law firms. The resulting entity, Deloitte Legal, has since grown rapidly, now boasting over 2,500 legal professionals globally. On paper, at least, that would make it one of the top 10 UK-headquartered firms by headcount.
But the figures alone fail to show the whole story. Conflicts with audit, limited brand recognition and notably lower partner profits compared to Big Law rivals have made it challenging to retain partners.
In March this year, EY announced plans to cut 30 legal jobs in the UK as part of a wider overhaul of its legal business.
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