EY Law Ireland
EY is Ireland’s only global and multidisciplinary professional services firm to offer a law firm as part of its client offering. Alan Murphy, Head of Law, explains the unique proposition
EY Law Ireland offers expertise from multiple jurisdictions across the EY network, which is made up of over 150 countries worldwide. The EY Law service in Ireland expands on and seamlessly integrates with our already expansive service offering across tax, strategy and transactions, assurance, and consulting.
While unique to Ireland, this form of streamlined service offering via separate law firm is rapidly becoming the norm in other jurisdictions. Indeed, it could be said that Ireland is a late developer in this regard. I firmly believe that this is part of the future of law, a future that will see it develop in tandem and in concert with other professional services disciplines such as accountancy, taxation, and consulting.
SINGLE PROVIDER
This is clearly where clients want to see it going. Professional services firms need to continually evolve in order to stay relevant and ahead of client demand. Streamlining our offerings and creating efficiencies while consistently providing the highest level of service and advice is an imperative.
Clients want to be able to go to a single provider to access the full range of services. Of course, EY Law Ireland is a separate entity to EY Ireland, but we will work very closely together to deliver the integrated service offering our clients are seeking.
For example, an international company locating in Ireland can come to EY Law for intellectual property, tax, corporate structure, and real estate advice — all under one roof. And with Irish organisations facing an increasingly complex legal and regulatory environment, we will be in the vanguard when it comes to helping our clients to navigate their existing and emerging business issues.
It’s also professionally enriching for lawyers, accountants, and consultants to work together. We come from different backgrounds and have different training processes. That allows us to bring different perspectives and approaches to the same problem and ultimately deliver a much more holistic and superior service to clients.
Although we only started up in October 2021, we have already established strong teams in four practice areas — commercial real estate, employment law, technology, and commercial, and corporate and M&A restructuring. We are now building our energy and sustainability, and financial services teams. We are very focused on our strategy of building out these strategically important teams as quickly as we can.
We now have 12 lawyers, and we plan to grow to 50 by 2025 and we already have a presence in Dublin, Cork and Galway. That geographical spread is very important to us and we see it as a positive differentiator to what else is out there. Also, the virtual world and the learnings of the last two years enables service integration across different offices in ways that wasn’t previously possible.
UNIQUE SERVICE
I’m incredibly excited about our plans for the future, and I’m proud to be part of a firm with such a strong vision and ambitious growth plans. By connecting the right people in the right places with technology-driven workflows and senior legal advisory services, I believe our service is truly unique.
As we continue to build out the practice, our focus will remain firmly on working closely with clients and colleagues across local and global EY teams. We continue to actively recruit senior lawyers with relevant sectoral experience to build out our exceptional team of legal professionals and I’m confident we will meet the evolving needs of our clients, now and into the future.
Learn more ey.com/ie/law