PwC LLP

Firm overview: We believe businesses need legal services that provide certainty in a time of disruption, that help them think differently and even turn that disruption into their advantage. We quickly identify opportunities and risks and provide clear, actionable advice on the best response. We’re legal partners who embrace technology to enable smarter, faster decision making. We understand our client’s businesses and how they need to evolve.

At PwC we’ve got lawyers. But we’ve also got accountants, consultants, experts in industries, deals, risk, tax and technology. We work together to help clients unlock value throughout their business while protecting their people and their organisation.

The Future of Legal

The legal profession is going through significant change. Legal teams must adapt quickly to changing client and employee demands brought on by advances in technology. There is a growing need to get more value from legal services and those teams that succeed will be agile, innovative and knowledgeable.

Main areas of practice: Our legal business solutions team brings the best of business understanding, technology innovation and legal expertise, to advise our clients on industry and technology trends.

International business reorganisations (IBR): In a fast-changing global marketplace large organisations need to achieve structural and business flexibility. However, businesses undertaking any structural change must be alert to the legal risks involved. PwC’s international structuring lawyers are skilled in managing these risks; designing multi-jurisdictional structuring plans and providing full implementation support for our client base of multinational FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 companies.

Intellectual property (IP): Our experts are highly experienced at helping clients to protect, optimise and commercialise their intellectual property and other business assets. We assist companies of all sizes and across all sectors with their complex intellectual property and commercial needs, working closely with non-legal specialists and PwC’s own extensive legal network around the world.

Data protection: PwC provides business-critical support on data protection, privacy, confidentiality and security matters to businesses, governments and public authorities globally. Successful strategy development, execution and compliance monitoring require the blended skills of a multidisciplinary professional services team, which PwC is uniquely placed to provide.

Banking and finance: The team advises on a wide variety of domestic and cross-border finance transactions, including real estate and development finance, leveraged and acquisition finance, corporate facilities and receivables finance. While we regularly handle traditional transactional banking matters for borrowers and lenders alike, we also provide advice on large-scale transactions such as LIBOR transition projects, complex solvent restructuring and the establishment of in-house banks and other lending vehicles.

Indirect tax: Our indirect tax disputes lawyers are integrated into PwC’s indirect tax business, enabling us to offer clients a fully integrated tax disputes service covering all stages of a dispute from initial enquiry and investigation to final resolution, either by agreement or through the courts. With our in-depth knowledge of all aspects of indirect tax and VAT, and customs and excise we are often asked to conduct pre-litigation investigations for clients to identify potential disputes with HMRC, thereby offering a broader range of options than are available at the litigation stage and helping clients to make properly informed decisions. Clients also appreciate PwC’s depth of technical knowledge and experience of varied dispute resolution styles, including ADR or treaty resolution as well as tax litigation.

Direct tax: PwC has a strong practice in handling direct tax disputes – concerning corporation tax, capital gains tax, VAT, environmental taxes, NIC – before the UK Tax Tribunals (First-tier and Upper), High Court, Court of Appeal, Supreme Court and the European Courts. We also handle dispute strategy planning, settlement negotiations and ADR as well as HRCP settlement negotiations, including enquiry management such as limitation of issues, tax authority information gathering and international matters. The team regularly coordinates simultaneous challenges to tax authority decisions across multiple jurisdictions, protecting our clients’ position to the fullest possible extent. We also coordinate investigations and enquiries involving numerous tax authorities, including cross-border information gathering and the use of tax treaty dispute resolution mechanisms.

Environmental regulatory: PwC’s leading team advises clients on all aspects of environmental and sustainability risk management and compliance, and can also help clients to optimise their day-to-day operations. Typical work includes permits, contamination issues and carbon regulation, corporate or property transactions/restructuring, supply chain ESG reporting and environmental disputes relating to contamination, nuisance or other issues. Wework closely with specialist environmental tax and sustainability colleagues to provide commercial advice in a range of sectors – particularly the waste management sector, industrial manufacturing and services, and the retail and consumer markets.

ESG:The world is on a fast trajectory towards a more sustainable future. This journey will lead to increased environmental and sustainability regulation across all sectors of the economy. PwC can help to identify and harness the opportunities arising from these changing environmental, social and governance regulations and ensure that your company is ready to achieve full compliance. We provide commercial, market focused advice to clients in a range of sectors, including manufacturing, oil and gas, energy and waste, and construction.

Employment: More than ever, employment law issues are receiving significant attention. Businesses must attract and retain top talent, adapting to changing employee expectations and engaging the workforce of the future. Understanding the rapidly developing employment law landscape and managing associated risks is a key part of this. PwC counts among our clients many household names and we have considerable experience of all key industry sectors. The multidisciplinary team includes specialists in tax, rewards, pensions, mobility, immigration, HR and incentives, allowing us to handle the most complex multi-faceted matters.

Entity governance and compliance (EGC): Recent regulatory change, both in the UK and globally, has focused attention on the importance to businesses of having robust compliance controls in place. PwC works with businesses to review, design and implement corporate governance structures that help them reduce liability, control costs and manage risks. We can provide integrated services that combine support for ‘business-as-usual’ activities on an annual, fixed fee basis with advice on discrete projects to, for example, address known risks and provide for ad hoc project and advisory support within a transparent pricing framework.

Financial services – corporate and regulatory: PwC regularly advises on international business reorganisations in the banking, insurance, asset and wealth management, and fintech, payments and crypto sectors. This also includes support with M&A, investments and joint ventures. Using sophisticated legal techniques our skilled team is particularly adept at delivering cross-border projects in highly regulated sectors or where the assets and liabilities are unusually complex.

NewLaw: Combining PwC’s unique consulting methodology, data analytics and in-depth knowledge of the legal services market, our NewLaw team provides support to clients in managing and transforming their legal operations, providing process and technology optimised managed legal services and contract review and remediation services.