Multidisciplinary professional services networks

Multidisciplinary professional services networks are organizations formed by law, accounting and other professional services firms to offer clients new multidisciplinary approaches solving increasingly complex issues. They are a type of professional services network which operates to provide services to their members. They operate in the same way as accounting firm networks and associations and law firm networks. They do not practice a profession such as law or accounting but provide services to members so they can serve clients needs.Aim is to provide members involved in doing business internationally with access to experienced, tried and tested, reliable, and responsive professional advisers who know their local jurisdiction intimately as well as the intricacies of cross border business.

There are 10 multidisciplinary networks. The largest are: Alliott Group, MSI Global Alliance, Morison International, Geneva Group, International Practice Group,WSG - World Services Group and Russell Bedford International. These networks have more than 100 member firms in as many as 90 countries in hundreds of offices. The members employ thousands of professionals.

Multidisciplinary networks are not new but found in a number of professions. They became important during the end of the 1990s when the accounting firms began to expand to the legal profession. The history is well documented.

The American Bar Association Commission on Multidisciplinary Practice refers to five multidisciplinary models. They are the cooperative, command and control, ancillary practice, network and multidisciplinary partnership models.

The multidisciplinary issues first arose in the 1940s but was dealt with by the American Bar Association prohibiting lawyers working for accounting firms to represent clients before the IRS. The foundation of multidisciplinary practice began when the Big 4 accounting firms reached their natural growth limits. Accounting, auditing and tax services could generate only a finite amount of revenue for the Big 6. The Big 4’s concept was simple: use the extensive list of clients to market non-traditional accounting services such as legal, recruitment, risk management, technology consulting, etc. The objective was to bring these non-traditional services “in-house” using the time-tested network model.

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