Reimagining Legal Relationships
The Legal 500’s publishing director David Burgess speaks exclusively to chief legal officer David Stark about the overhaul of external legal relationships being undertaken by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, as the company is set to slash its roster of firms.
Everything is up for grabs at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries – well, certainly from an external law firm perspective. The Israeli-based company – the largest manufacturer of generic drugs globally – recently announced that all existing law firm relationships were under review, with a view to reducing the number of law firms used and to cut costs. While conceptually, that may not seem like anything groundbreaking in and of itself, Teva has taken things further than usual – going as far as warning existing firms that it is more than conceivable that they won’t continue to be instructed.
‘Revenue growth at Teva is flat. Law firms’ rates are going up. We have to do something different – that is it in a nutshell,’ explains David Stark, chief legal officer at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. ‘We took a run at this five years or so ago. Things were hectic back then, and there wasn’t really the ato do it, and it was incredibly time intensive.’
