The Times reported on Wednesday (12 November) that Britain’s largest property company, Land Securities, is doing extremely nicely thank you, having made a pre-tax profit of just over £1 billion in the first 6 months of the year. Robert Noel their chief executive puts this sterling performance down to “some of the best market conditions [in London] in modern times”.
Looking to the future one wonders how long this can go on: structural changes are afoot that will change the way we all work, and we bet, twenty years from now the daily grind into the (city centre) office will be no more.
Take the effect of the internet: as Frances Cairncross remarked in her 2002 book The Company of the Future “…internet technologies will thus reinforce outsourcing, a trend that has been in progress for at least two decades.” Outsourcing is the companion to business decentralisation; as the organisation procures its services from various contracted-out sources, no longer will all services have to be under one roof (literally or metaphorically).
That is precisely the model that Prima Facie exemplifies. It is a form of pro-active, contracted-out in-house counsel. There at your business’ right hand, as and when (and to the extent) it is needed.