Chapman: focusing resources
Rising demand from FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 clients has led Riverview Law to stop offering its innovative annual contracts for small businesses, Legal Futures has learned.
Small businesses could previously access a broad range of everyday legal services from as little as £200 a month for unlimited advice, but Riverview CEO Karl Chapman confirmed that no new annual contracts will be sold to this part of the market for the foreseeable future and existing contracts will not be renewed as they come up for renewal.
Annual contracts are still available for mid-cap companies, while small businesses can instruct Riverview for specific litigation and other legal projects on a fixed-fee basis.
Mr Chapman said demand for its ‘Legal Advisory Outsourcing’ model – which enables large businesses to enter into long-term managed service arrangements with Riverview for their day-to-day legal needs – has grown much faster than expected.
“This area of the business has grown incredibly quickly and, like any business, we’ve got to focus our resources on where we’re seeing the biggest customer demand and that’s with large corporations,” he said.
Riverview, which launched in February 2012, currently has approaching 200 staff and is on another recruitment drive reflecting its growth with big businesses. Mr Chapman said that he hoped to reintroduce annual contracts for small businesses “at some point in the not-too-distant future”.
In the meantime Riverview’s experience showed there is demand for such offerings from small clients.
He said: “It wasn’t a decision we took lightly because the feedback from customers to the service was fantastic. I’d like to thank all our small business customers for their support over the last two years. There is clear demand for a fixed-price offering to small businesses and I’ve no doubt that other law firms will introduce such products given the opportunity.”
