The in-house legal teams at nine financial institutions have joined forces to persuade five City law firms to pilot a unique shared portal for accessing legal updates and information, they revealed this week.

The initiative, led by Deutsche Bank's legal department, is a first step towards a joint database of industry-specific templates, precedents and advice.


The nine banks involved in setting up the Banking Legal Technology Group include Barclays Capital, Credit Suisse First Boston, Goldman Sachs and HSBC. The portal will be made available to other financial institutions - and their legal advisers - if the pilot is a success.


Freshfields: sharing briefings

So far City firms Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Linklaters, and Simmons & Simmons have provided legal briefings and newsletters to the site.

Greg Bracken, professional support lawyer at Deutsche Bank who has been heavily involved in the initiative, said: 'One of the key advantages is that there will be a single place to go for information, rather than using the different firms' extranets. As each law firm's material will be next to that of other firms, we hope this element of competition will encourage the firms to add more to the site. Over time we believe there could be quite a substantial bank of information.'


The pilot will run until April next year. Legal teams at ABN Amro, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and UBS will also have access to the portal.