Business Wire
With billions of dollars lost in the Fortune 1000 alone due to legacy contracting processes, UnitedLex, a leading technology and legal services company, today announced five executive hires to bring a wealth of expertise across client and market development, experience, delivery, and operational excellence and meet increasing demand for legal transformation.
With Gartner finding that 69% of companies accelerated digital business initiatives in the wake of Covid-19, organizations are moving to transform one of the last business areas: the legal department. In 2021, large organizations are looking to adopt new ways of working, leveraging technology platforms and automation to drive optimization and growth.
The hires are a key element of the vision and strategy for UnitedLex’s Digital ecosystem: providing legal departments with the platform to embrace a digital world and to deliver new and expanded value to businesses.
UnitedLex’s new hires all hail from the Big Four firms, bringing decades of experience growing complex business and driving transformational change for clients across industries and around the world.
The hires are:
David Clarke joins UnitedLex as Executive Vice President and Chief Experience and Marketing Officer. Clarke previously served as PwC’s Digital Strategy and Innovation Leader, leading the go-to-market, demand generation, brand, strategy, experience, and marketing functions for the firm's products and services. He was PwC's first Global Chief Experience Officer and grew the Experience Centers to 42 locations with 4,000+ strategists, creatives, and technologists. At UnitedLex, Clarke will lead all functions within the experience organization including commercial, product and solutions, and marketing for both internal and external stakeholders.
Mike Duggan joins UnitedLex as Executive Vice President, Clients and Markets. In this role, Duggan will draw from his 25-year background in technology enabled transformation and professional services to drive value for UnitedLex’s customers. Duggan previously served as a Partner at Deloitte, where he led a top 100 “crown jewel” global account. Under his leadership, this team achieved client NPS scores above 90% and won the largest share of addressable spend.
Audra Nichols joins UnitedLex as Senior Vice President, Digital Solutions and Methods, with a focus on defining and packaging UnitedLex services to realize optimal client impact on workflow, culture, talent, and technology. Nichols brings to UnitedLex more than 25 years of global professional services experience, which includes growing PwC’s multi-disciplinary consulting services portfolio and leading the firm’s large-scale transformational change efforts centered on client value, revenue growth, and business profitability.
Bhavesh Patel joins UnitedLex as Senior Vice President, Transformation. He will focus on designing and delivering the largest, most complex transformations using a digital first, customer centric approach. Prior to UnitedLex, Patel spent 20 years as a management and technology consultant at Accenture, PwC, and most recently at West Monroe Partners where he was a partner leading their New York Healthcare and Life Sciences practice.
Christian Schmitt joins UnitedLex as Executive Vice President, Clients and Markets Leader, EMEA. Schmitt brings a 20-plus year background in delivering large and complex programs solving his clients most important problems. For the last decade, he held global roles as head of Wealth Management and Senior Client Partner for PwC. He has worked and studied on five continents and is known for bringing programs or organizations back on track with an inclusive approach across geographies, cultures and competencies.
“UnitedLex is deeply committed to delivering operational excellence to our clients and the appointment of this group of exceptional professionals underscores our dedication to this mission,” said UnitedLex CEO Dan Reed. “At UnitedLex, we are leading the way for digital transformation in legal, one of the last industries to fully embrace digital solutions. By harnessing the knowledge of these digital transformation experts, UnitedLex can meet the tremendous demand to bring legal into the digital age.”
The addition of new talent builds on UnitedLex’s existing world-class leadership and further invests in diverse digital and technology expertise. Notably, David Edelheit, previously with PwC, recently joined UnitedLex as Chief Digital and Transformation Officer to advance the digital transformation of its multinational customer set and onboard new organizations committed to revolutionizing their law departments. Sean Jennings joined as Chief Technology Officer charged with spearheading the creation of a revolutionary legal-tech infrastructure at UnitedLex—including the development of Vantage, which offers law departments a comprehensive and cohesive platform to unite disparate business units and unlock revenue growth.