Minter Ellison’s broader brush ‘for clients’: Annette Kimmitt

Minter Ellison’s Annette Kimmitt.

If Annette Kimmitt is right, Minter Ellison’s latest move into non-legal consulting services is helping to redefine what it means to be a law firm.

This week’s launch of Minter Ellison Infrastructure Consulting is part of a trend that is gathering force: this firm already has remuneration and governance experts working with its workplace lawyers as well as a technology consulting arm that incorporates the ITNewcom business it acquired in 2017.

Kimmitt, who is Minter Ellison’s chief executive and managing partner, says those areas are ­“adjacent” to the practice of law and the decision to move into them was influenced by clients, not the big four that have long been operating in areas that are adjacent to their original focus on accounting.

The logic underpinning the move by Minters is that it needs to broaden its offering to meet the needs of corporate clients who are operating in an increasingly complex business environment.

The same logic could apply to the big four.

“We are responding to the needs of our clients,” says Kimmitt. “Our focus has been and always will be about looking to the client for inspiration, not our ­competitors.

“In an increasingly complex environment, clients are screaming out for much more innovative and seamlessly integrated capabilities — legal and consulting — to help them address their most complex challenges.

“Law firms therefore have to evolve to meet these evolving client expectations. We see ourselves as the firm that’s out in front in responding to these changing market expectations — both in terms of redefining and better integrating our service offerings and through accelerating our focus on innovation.

“Our focus with our investments into adjacent areas of practice has been about redefining what it means to be a law firm, rather than trying to turn ourselves into a consulting firm.”

Minters has been heading in this direction since 2016, when the firm was led by Tony Harrington, an alumni of PwC.

That was when it acquired its remuneration governance team.

Kimmitt, who is a former Melbourne managing partner of EY, is not the only one to have picked up on the changing needs of corporate clients.

Thomson Geer has taken an equity stake in Canberra public ­affairs consultancy TG Endeavour that could eventually lead to full ownership.

Sparke Helmore has a consulting arm that focuses on tax strategy, governance, risk manage­ment and business structuring. Norton Rose Fulbright has a risk advisory service and Allens has a stake in regulatory technology business Red Marker.

All that needs to be seen in the context of the determined move into legal services by the big four.

The footprint in the market of the big four has grown to such an extent that they are more accurately described as providers of professional services, rather than auditing.

When Sparke Helmore decided to move into adjacent services, that law firm started to describe itself as a professional services firm with law at its core.

Kimmitt uses a similar description: “We believe our positioning and offerings set us apart from the big four — both for clients and for our ability to attract and retain the best talent,” she says.

“We are, and will remain, a law firm at our core.”