Magic circle firm Clifford Chance today announced it has acquired collapsed construction giant Carillion's 'managed legal services' offering. Carillion Advice Services (CAS) will be 'fully integrated' with Clifford Chance.

Uncertainty hung over the future of CAS when Carillion declared insolvency last month.

The legal arm was set up in 2011 to support Carillion's in-house legal team from Newcastle. It has provided over 30,000 hours of support to the Carillion in-house team, which the company said saved the business around 15% in external legal spend in 2016. CAS's team of 60 paralegals in Newcastle and 10 in Telford handles high-volume work of low-to-medium complexity, such as confidentiality agreements and legal research. CAS also provides contract management, document review and litigation support, corporate due diligence, unbundling and project support services.

Clifford Chance said the CAS team will continue to be led by director Lucy Nixon and it will continue to be based in Newcastle. The team will report to Clifford Chance managing partner Michael Bates, and Oliver Campbell, the firm's global head of client services solutions, who is also responsible for the legal support centre in India.

Bates said: 'Our priority is always to ensure that we are best placed to provide the optimum service to our clients.  By working with the CAS team, we will enhance our ability to provide extremely cost-effective, efficient and high-quality service on a range of low complexity legal tasks as an integral part of our overall client offer.

'To date, we have delivered this work either through our legal support centre in India, or through working with other third parties including legal outsourcers. The addition of the team in Newcastle, with their well-recognised expertise in unbundling, developing processes and applying the latest in legal tech, will enable us to provide clients with another option from within the firm.'