Across Europe, professional services firms that cater to SMEs are increasingly combining accounting services with high-margin advisory offerings such as tax and legal services—adopting a model pioneered by the Big Four. In Sweden, this approach remains dominated by the Big Four, but in other countries there are numerous large local and network-based accounting firms successfully integrating legal services into their portfolios.
A survey made by Katalysen portfolio venture Legalbuddy shows that most European countries, like Finland, Germany, Austria, Poland, and France, have several large local and network-based professional service firms that offer both accounting and legal services to the SME segment.
Considering that the SME segment represents 99% of all the companies in EU, this is a very attractive market for players equipped with the right kind of business support services and tools. The survey also shows that many of these professional service firms are of notable size (100-10 000 employees) and have access to large customer bases in the accounting field (in the region of 1'000-100'000 customers).
“Through Legalbuddy’s innovative platform, professional service firms can now significantly grow their legal services business by offering an easy access connection to the lawyers. This is LegalTech as a growth engine,” comments Joel Wickman, CEO and co-founder of Legalbuddy.
Legalbuddy empowers the professional services firms with a three-pronged approach:
Enhance Client Interaction: The platform provides an intuitive interface that seamlessly connects existing accounting clients to legal experts, ensuring a smooth transition to high-value legal consultations.
Drive New Business: With a robust SEO-driven strategy, the platform creates a steady flow of new client leads, ensuring a sustainable pipeline for growth.
Boost Retention and Collaboration: Legalbuddy’s collaborative tools foster long-term engagement between lawyers and clients, increasing loyalty and stickiness to the firm’s services.
“There is a significant potential to expand Legalbuddy into many new countries using the same model as we are doing for Finland where the Legalbuddy tool is used to convert existing low margin accounting clients of one of the major accounting firms to high margin legal services clients. We really look forward to the next wave of expansion in Europe,” concludes Joel.
If you would like to learn more about Legalbuddy, reach out to us at Katalysen, visit www.legalbuddy.com, or contact Legalbuddy CEO Joel Wickman at joel@legalbuddy.com.
