The D.Law website is, at the time of writing, still under construction (see above), ostensibly to relaunch it with Deloitte branding. Image: screenshot of dlaw.lu

The D.Law website is, at the time of writing, still under construction (see above), ostensibly to relaunch it with Deloitte branding. Image: screenshot of dlaw.lu

At the beginning of December 2023, D.Law officially became “Deloitte Legal.” Following PwC and EY, Deloitte is the third Big Four to set up its own legal business. (KPMG seems to have given up.)

Thomas Held and François Lerusse have put an end to a friendly private joke: at the beginning of December, the two lawyers--who bought Jean-Philippe Drescher’s shares in D.Law in 2020--rebranded the law firm “Deloitte Legal.” For a long time, the joke was whether the “D” stood for Deloitte or Drescher.

In 2012--when Drescher founded D.Law after ten years with Deloitte--the thinking was clearly that, left to do its own thing, the Big Four firm would approach legal services by adding a layer of legal advice on top of its existing services, thus depriving any lawyer of the juiciest part of the business. “Or the other way around,” says one expert. “If you have companies that want legal advice in Luxembourg--which is not a large place--and there’s good rapport, they’re going to ask if you know a good accountant or tax advisor. And of course you’re not going to send them to a competitor.”

That year, the Luxembourg Bar Association filed a complaint against PwC, EY and KPMG, who (it seemed) were angling to do something similar, citing the law prohibiting company auditors from providing legal advice. Everyone put the brakes on their plans (except D.Law, which took advantage of the vagueness of its name) until, four years later, at the instigation of Bar Association president François Prüm, the lawyers and the Big Four found common ground: an interprofessional charter providing a common frame of reference for the activities of the various professionals and how each one related (directly or indirectly) to the practice of law, auditing or chartered accountancy.

PwC moved first, taking over MNKS (the Noble & Scheidecker law firm) in 2018 and transforming it into “PwC Legal.” According to the 2023 accounts, the firm now employs 22 lawyers and a total staff of 44, plus one independent lawyer.

PwC Legal remains the largest structure of its kind in Luxembourg. The firm now known as Deloitte Legal, which did not respond to our requests (over the holiday period) for more information, has 14 lawyers and 22 total employees, as of 2021 Bar Association numbers. EY Law has 11 lawyers, also according to the bar.

As of early January, only KPMG has responded to our queries. A spokesperson said that KPMG Law Luxembourg “ceased to be affiliated with the KPMG network of members on 30 September 2022.” On 4 October of the same year, the firm became “Key Luxembourg Law.”

This article in Paperjam. It has been translated and edited for Delano.

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