EY Legislation Brings On Effectively-Identified Canadian Authorized Tech Entrepreneur to Construct Out New Shopper Companies

Peter Carayiannis, a pioneer of on-demand authorized providers together with his agency Conduit Legislation, is at present becoming a member of EY Legislation Canada as a associate.

On the tenth anniversary of his various authorized service supplier agency Conduit Legislation, Carayiannis mentioned as an entrepreneur he thought it was time for a brand new problem.

“I’m going to be serving to [EY] to construct out their authorized managed providers and their authorized advisory providers function in type of adjoining or in alignment with enterprise legislation providers for his or her present shoppers,” Carayiannis instructed Legislation.com Worldwide.

EY Canada just lately named Shara Roy as its new chief authorized counsel. She will even be the manager managing associate of  EY Legislation, its affiliated Canadian legislation agency, which affords enterprise legislation, tax legislation, and immigration legislation providers.

Carayiannis mentioned he’s enthusiastic about being a part of a crew and the possibility to assist lead the build-out of modern authorized options by offering versatile and agile choices for the evolving authorized wants of shoppers, each in Canada and globally.

“The realm the place I’m going to spend probably the most quantity of my time and power is round really exploiting the digital instruments to make the apply higher,” he mentioned.

Conduit offered “on-demand” attorneys and authorized providers by way of secondments or part-time attorneys to help each in-house counsel and legislation companies in masking their wants for short-term tasks, spikes in work, and overflow work—sometimes called “fractional possession” of a GC.

“Peter has constructed a profession by doing issues unconventionally, discovering alternate methods to modernize the trade to ship higher worth to folks and shoppers. We’re excited to have his modern and curious mindset on the EY Legislation crew,” mentioned Albert Anelli, managing associate of tax at EY Canada.

Within the decade since launching Conduit—with what Carayiannis described because the “whacky” thought of making a digital legislation agency that leverages the perfect expertise so “our attorneys are liberated and might work from anyplace on the planet”—innovation within the authorized career has moved full steam forward and Carayiannis mentioned he’s proud to have contributed in making that imaginative and prescient extra mainstream.

That is his second go-round with one of many Massive 4. In 2016, he shaped a partnership with Deliotte, creating Deloitte Conduit Legislation LLP. Solely 18 months later, the 2 cut up up, with Carayiannis saying that Conduit might “scale extra quickly as an unbiased agency.”

This time round, he’s closing down Conduit “as a authorized entity.” His longtime colleagues Matt Seymour and Rajiv Arya are taking up Conduit’s e-book of enterprise.

The duo are nonetheless engaged on the technique for the brand new Conduit however Seymour mentioned they just like the agency’s worth proposition and the instruments Carayannis created to trace time billing, shopper communications, doc storage and different duties. “It’s an efficient mannequin,” he mentioned.

Shifting ahead, they plan to alter route barely to focus solely on drafting and negotiating complicated industrial transactions, equivalent to SAAS agreements and helping shoppers with privateness legislation compliance. Each are distinct areas that require experience most GCs don’t have the bandwidth for, mentioned Seymour.

Carayiannis was for 10 years the overall counsel at RealNet Canada, a property market info service now known as Altus Group, and earlier than that GC at Windrush Vitality. He additionally co-founded Standin Legislation, which matched attorneys with different attorneys, brokers and authorized professionals for courtroom appearances. He began working towards legislation at what’s now Gowling WLG in 1997.