Negotiating IT Service Contracts – In House v Private Practice Legal Models

Clive Davies, Senior Counsel and Professional Development Manager Legal & Commercial, UK&I, Fujitsu Services Limited, UK

I have been privileged to work over my career as a partner in private practice with leading City firms in London and as a senior in-house lawyer in global companies. Indeed I have moved from industry to private practice and then back again. For a significant portion of this time I have been advising on and negotiating contracts for the provision of information technology (IT) services and the resolution of post contract delivery issues. This has given me a unique perspective on the advantages and disadvantages of these respective roles. The law is the same, the technology is the same, the delivery challenges are still there, but the lens through which we see the professional service we provide is different. So to some extent are the perspectives of the external and in-house ’clients” we deliver these services to. This article builds on that experience to explain the differences and to explore how we can learn from them. One of the critical aspects of this is the interface between the in-house team and the external law firm and how this can best operate to meet the requirements of our ultimate clients. I have discovered along this journey that the professional standards and ability of the lawyers involved are high in both branches of the profession, and each has particular contributions they can make. Each has a part to play in achieving the ultimate business or public sector goal of the successful delivery of IT services, albeit sometimes in different ways and with some advantages as well as constraints driven by the business model they operate.

Clive is a senior counsel with Fujitsu in the UK advising in particular on major IT service contracts with customers in the public and private sectors. Prior to joining Fujitsu Clive was the lead IT and outsourcing partner in London at two leading city law firms. Clive specialises in advising on large outsourcing agreements. He has a particular interest in improving the contracting process, believing that a successful contract supports effective delivery. He is also the professional development manager for the legal and commercial function in Fujitsu UK seeking to improve training and individual capability. Clive lectures and writes regularly on IT subjects. Clive is past chair and Fellow of SCL, a past chair of ITechLaw’s In-House Committee and an editor of Communications Law.

Fujitsu Limited is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world’s sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the largest in Japan, in 2021. See Fujitsu Limited’s website at https://www.fujitsu.com/global/. Fujitsu Services Limited is its UK subsidiary which employs over 7000 people and whose purpose is to make the world more sustainable by building trust in society through innovation. This is about seeing the value technology can create for customers today and in the future. See Fujitsu Services Limited’s website at https://www.fujitsu.com/uk/.