Bulletin

Issue: March 2005

News

Visit by leading IT outsourcing lawyer

One of the world’s leading lawyers specialising in information technology and business process outsourcing, Dr Trevor Nagel, above, recently spent a week at La Trobe University teaching a unit in La Trobe Law’s Global Business Law program.

Australian-born, Harvard qualified Dr Nagel is a Partner, and Head of the Global Technology Practice Group, at Shaw Pittman in Washington, DC, USA, a firm that ranks in the Am Law (American Lawyer) top 100 list. Dr Nagel is also Vice Chairman of the International Bar Association Committee on Technology and e-Commerce.

He says advances in communications and technology have led to a global consciousness and fundamental changes to the way we do business at the beginning of the 21st century. Spending on IT outsourcing, US $68 billion in 2002, is projected to grow to almost $100 billion by 2007.

Not only do lawyers have to be reconciled with changing technology and its commercial impact, but these dynamic changes have, in turn, dramatically changed the practice of technology law, encouraging clients to think in terms of ‘global transactions’, rather than just international deals done in other jurisdictions.

Dr Nagel says complex technology transactions, structured around sophisticated framework and alliance agreements, now encourage clients to ‘counsel-shop’ and hire lawyers from outside home jurisdictions on a ‘special counsel’ basis.

These global counsel often have significant roles in not only structuring transactions and determining processes to bring sophisticated deals to completion, but also in advising how the various components of scope, price and performance should be co-ordinated and integrated.
For example, he advises clients on a wide range of legal and business issues, including joint ventures and other strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, licensing and technology transfer transactions, and ways to structure and manage global networks.

Head of La Trobe Global Business Law, Professor Gordon Walker, says the La Trobe course was a rare opportunity in Australia to be taught by this recognised world-leader.

He says Dr Nagel was a pioneer of IT outsourcing law in the early 90s. His firm has a strong client base in Australia, including BHP Billiton, ANZ, NAB, Telstra, the Commonwealth of Australia and South Australian Water. Dr Nagel also has considerable experience in the European Union and Pacific Basin countries, having advised on global outsourcing and strategic alliance arrangements for McDonald’s, Cable & Wireless, MCI, Equant, Ahold
and Pepsi.