We’re delighted to share that Ian Teague has joined Pinsent Masons Vario as Head of Legal Delivery, Managed Legal Services in our international delivery centre in Cape Town.
Ian joins us from Radiant Law where he ran large legal teams across APAC, EMEA and the Americas. During his time at Radiant, Ian worked with some of the world’s biggest multinational corporations, especially in financial services.
We sat down with Ian to hear how he’s looking to bring his experience to bear to enhance our global managed legal services offering.
Tell us how you help in-house legal teams.
I work closely with general counsels and heads of legal to provide solutions to complex legal challenges, often on a global scale. I’m passionate about bringing together people, process and technology to find new ways of unlocking value.
And how are you looking to build out our offering going forward?
A big part of my brief is to help expand our global managed legal services offering. I’ll be working closely with clients to introduce innovative new service lines that can flex in line with their needs.
I’ll also be joining forces with legal teams from across Pinsent Masons to transform how they deliver their services. Banking documentation and M&A are just two examples of where we see a real potential to enhance our existing offering.
Following our announcement of an official partnership with Legora in February, we’re already developing new models that leverage this collaboration. For example, our enhanced employment tribunal claim service which combines our employment law expertise with bespoke AI workflows and our managed legal services capabilities to efficiently process and resolve increased claims volumes.
Looking at how the alternative legal services market is developing, what’s your message for in-house legal teams?
The conversation is, of course, all about AI and what human oversight you need. In-house legal teams are under pressure to introduce the latest tech to deliver more and deliver it faster, all while lowering costs. Of course, buying a subscription to the latest tool isn’t a silver bullet, and most leaders of in-house legal teams understand this.
You need a solution that delivers real value for the business. AI tools, and indeed legal tech tools in general, are hugely powerful enablers but they don’t deliver outcomes on their own. Without investing in the right operating model, you’re likely to see inconsistent outputs, new legal risks and low solution adoption. Not to mention higher costs!
I’ve long been a believer in the “people, process, and technology” trifecta. You get the best outcomes when AI solutions are embedded in a managed, accountable delivery model. When you have the right humans in the loop, you combine efficient outputs with legal judgement and commercial awareness. This powerful combination is much more likely to produce decision-making that really adds value.
There’s a lot of exciting work to do! I constantly hear that in-house legal teams need practical, hands-on advice. They just don’t have the bandwidth to manage introducing AI solutions alongside their other responsibilities.
I think this is where managed legal services teams can really help. You get the advantage of people who live this day in and day out, and to harness AI’s benefits without the upfront time investment that’s normally needed to build and maintain a solution. What’s more, a managed legal services team will monitor outputs and safely refine processes over time to ensure consistent improvements.
