Newport Beach law firm Stradling, Yocca, Carlson & Rauth is starting a unit to offer business consulting services to clients and potential clients.
The unit, Stradling Global Sourcing Inc., is looking to help big companies do things they might otherwise turn to better-known management consulting companies for.
Stradling plans to negotiate telecommunications contracts, technology outsourcing deals or set up global call centers in deals that could run anywhere from $20 million to $2.5 billion each.
The move is a switch for Stradling, Orange County’s third largest law firm with about 100 local lawyers. The firm is known for its legal work with growing companies on acquisitions, public financing and patent litigation.
“To get this practice in house, it was a bold step for us,” said Shivbir Grewal, a member of Stradling’s executive committee.
The unit is seen as a way to help the law firm grab work from bigger businesses beyond the West Coast. The consulting business is set to have regional managers serving the U.S. as well as Europe and Asia.
Stradling also is hoping to sell legal clients on consulting services. Many of them are looking to expand abroad and need help to “connect the dots,” Grewal said.
The unit plans to focus on information technology consulting work, he said. It’ll target technology, energy, defense, medical, manufacturing and financial services companies.
The move brings Stradling into a crowded field dominated by big names, including McKinsey & Co., Bearing- Point Inc. and Accenture Ltd.
The Stradling unit is looking to add about a dozen consultants and lawyers in the next 18 months. The group is starting off with four consultants, who were hired away from the global strategic sourcing practice of Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc.
Kevin Parikh, an international lawyer and contract negotiator from Gartner, is heading the unit. He’s set to work from Stradling’s Newport Center office.
Parikh has set up offshore operations for an automaker, canned foods retailer and an insurer, among other multimillion-dollar deals.
The outsourcing is a way to free up companies to focus on their businesses and not operations, Parikh said.
“They say, ‘We’re now in the business of being an IT operation, and that’s not our core competency,'” he said. “We can come in there and negotiate (those services) away from them.”
The move comes at a busy time for Stradling, whose clients include Santa Ana’s Powerwave Technologies Inc. and Costa Mesa-based Ceradyne Inc.
Last month, Stradling opened its fifth office, in San Diego. Stradling’s office near La Jolla was started with four lawyers and is headed by Tim O’Brien, who came from OC.
