Last Friday, 12 February 2016, the Australasian Lawyer published an interesting article detailing how the in-house legal teams at Telstra and Westpac had ‘swapped’ lawyers as part of a three-month pilot secondment program.

That this is a fairly novel and innovative approach shouldn’t come as a particular surprise: both Telstra – with its fixed fee arrangement with the law firm Gilbert + Tobin back in 2009 – and Westpac – most recently with its hackathon with legal teams from (again) Gilbert + Tobin and its legal start up LegalVision – are seen as being at the cutting edge of developing in-house innovation around legal services.

But… as pointed out in a tweet by leading legal market observer, Mitch Kowalski, on Friday night… what makes this recent arrangement between Telstra and Westpac particularly interesting is that it shows every sign of potentially being the start of shared legal services among Australian in-house teams.

If true, and I cannot see why it shouldn’t be, you have to wonder what the ramifications of this would be more broadly to Australian private practice firms?

Take on board the comment of Rebecca Lim, Westpac’s chief compliance officer & group general counsel that:

“Given the success of this pilot, we are certainly inspired to look for similar forms of ongoing engagement with other in-house legal teams. I believe there is much to be gained from collaborative programs such as this.”

Disruptive springs to mind!