Ashurst on target to reach 300-jobs goal in Glasgow

Ashurst is due to achieve its goal of creating 300 jobs within five years of opening its legal and business support centre in Glasgow.

The firm will receive the final instalment from a total of £2.4 million from Scottish Development International if it fulfils its target.

It currently employs 230 staff at the Waterloo Street office.

Managing director Mike Polson said that despite the legal scene changing “dramatically in terms of efficiency and innovation”, the firm was on track to reaching its goal.

He told The Herald: “In the lead up to our launch we put together a target of 50 new roles over a five-year period.

“We had a lot of clarity around about 50 per cent of those roles but beyond that it was about how it developed.

“At the moment we have about 60 people who are very directly legal and the rest of the office works in seven business support areas including IT, HR, risk and compliance, and finance.”

Legal analysts undertake most of the legal work but there also qualified lawyers including finance partner Michael Lancaster and others.

Mr Polson described the legal analyst role as one in which “law meets business meets technology”.

He added: “This is an alternative career path in the legal market and it is designed not to be a stepping stone to qualification like the paralegal role is.”

The team deals with document review, due diligence and takes work from the firm’s 24 international offices.

“The work is spread across the whole business,” Mr Polson said.

“Initially we thought a lot of our activity would be London linked because it’s our biggest office and its closest to us but it has all become very global much more quickly .

“The proposition is that any legal project is capable of being broken down into its constituent parts and that some of those can be lifted out to be delivered in a central base.

“The last time we ran the stats we were supporting 44 different product lines and we try to do that for as many offices as possible.”