Claire Hirst joins PwC from Axiom, where she was a senior manager in the managed legal services team and helped to build its Belfast Centre of Excellence. The move is another step in PwC's decision to expand its commercial contract division.The company has been actively investing in technology-based solutions to address key issues for in-house clients, particularly within the commercial contracting area where the Big Four player sees significant growth potential. The latest appointment beefs up the firm’s existing Managed Legal Services capability, which supports large in-house legal teams manage high volume activity - such as day to day contracting and large contract review projects using legal expertise, lawtech and scalable process.  

Operational efficiency

At PwC Ms Hirst  will work closely with partners Andrew Giverin and Jason McQuillen. Her appointment underlines PwC’s efforts to invest in its expanding New Law capabilities, which is targeting large in-house legal teams to improve operational efficiency and better meet increasing business demand. Ms Hirst said of the move: 'PwC is doing incredibly innovative work in this space to solve the challenges facing large in-house legal teams. I look forward to adding to the creativity and expertise of the team to help clients work more effectively.' 

Shaping the legal function

PwC earlier recruited Andrew Giverin and Jason McQuillen as partners. The duo were previously co-founders of Radiant Law, an award winning boutique law firm where they led sales and client delivery. They work with large clients to design and develop managed legal services solutions for large corporations and help them to optimise how they handle their bulk contracting work. The aim is to help shape the legal function and free up in-house lawyers to focus on more high-value and strategic work.