The UK business brand will be launched in Australia and will see it work closely with GTC, leveraging the Australian national player’s local market knowledge and client acquisition capabilities. As part of the arrangement, Taylor Rose will contribute its intellectual property to develop and enhance GTC’s existing business, providing consultants with remote access to a centralised service platform, management infrastructure, digital marketing expertise, and sophisticated IT support and systems.

The joint venture will see GTC trade as Taylor Rose.

In a statement, the firms said that analysis of the Australian legal services industry suggests that the market could suit large-scale adoption of the consultant model.

According to GTC Legal Group Holdings founder and chief executive James Stevens, the “highly fragmented nature” of the legal services industry in Australia will help to accelerate adoption.

“With an average of only three lawyers per firm, Australia represents one of the most fragmented legal markets in the world, providing a significant opportunity for Taylor Rose to achieve its target of becoming the leading consultancy law firm in Australia by 2025,” the firms declared.

Taylor Rose is a top 60 firm in the UK, operating across England and Wales primarily in consumer law sectors such as conveyancing, private clients, family and criminal law. It has more than 600 employees across the UK, as well as over 500 consultant lawyers, generating annual revenues of over £70 million, the firm said. Its parent company is AIIC Group.

GTC Legal Group’s umbrella includes revenue-sharing-model law firm GTC Lawyers, legal referral network All Courts Lawyers, office service company GTC Legal Services, and “traditional” law firm Armstrong Legal. It operates across seven segments of personal law, has over 120 staff in seven offices in Australia and generated unaudited revenue of $20.3 million for the last financial year.

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Speaking about the expansion into Australia and partnership with GTC, Taylor Rose director of consultative services Antony Jaggard said: “Consultancy has become an attractive and viable alternative for experienced lawyers that offers increased earnings and a better work/life balance accruing from working from home.

“We’ve worked hard to develop a platform and processes that give our consultants the best possible experience, and that’s really paying off.” 

“Australia has always been a market we’ve been very interested in, and this partnership provides us with the perfect opportunity to expand the legal consultancy offering,” Mr Jaggard continued.

“The country has lagged behind in terms of development, and GTC is one of the very few Australian firms that already [have] an established presence in this area that we can work with to grow the consultancy offering at speed and scale.”

Mr Stevens added that the Australian legal services group “has been growing our consulting model organically over the past few years to the point where we now have around 70 consultants around the country”.

“Our partnership with Taylor Rose will combine their industry-leading UK know-how with the practice management platform, NebuLAW, which we have already established here in Australia to captivate a growing market that is set to completely disrupt the Australian legal industry,” he said.

The joint statement further noted that the “lack of requirement” for law firms to pay professional indemnity insurance (PII) run-off in Australia would also help to accelerate the model’s growth, “as lawyers are able to transition their whole business to the new model with little cost or risk, and achieve economies of scale that would otherwise not be possible”.

“Taylor Rose sees potential for the consultancy model across all areas of professional services, but particularly in the commercial and property markets, where a coordinated and extensive platform for lawyers to operate as fully-supported consultants is yet to be established,” it said.

While the firms believe that the consultancy model is better placed to take full advantage of now-mainstream hybrid working arrangements, as professionals seek to reduce travel time and have a better work/life balance, Taylor Rose consultants who prefer to be office-based will still have access to office workspaces in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.

The news follows the termination of the proposed merger between GTC and listed firm Australian Family Lawyers (ASX: AFL) back in late November. The merger — first announced in mid-October — was supposed to create one of Australia’s largest personal services law firms and was billed at the time as a “seminal moment for the personal legal services industry”.

In terminating the merger, GTC and AFL ultimately came to a “no liability” agreement, as reported by Lawyers Weekly at the end of November. One week later, AFL announced its establishment of a new office in Brisbane’s Bayside — its 20th office across the country.