Case Study: Legal transformation support for a benchmark transition programme in banking

Challenge

The client is a global financial institution with a substantial portfolio of derivatives and financing agreements referencing interbank offered rates. The discontinuation of LIBOR obliged the institution to identify affected contracts across its book, draft and agree replacement rate provisions, and complete the transition to alternative reference rates within regulatory timelines that could not be moved.

This was a legal transformation programme in substance as well as name. It required repapering large contract populations while market standards were still settling, and demanded lawyers who understood derivatives and financing documentation in detail rather than generalists who would need to learn it. The volume was too great for the existing team to absorb, and the specialist profile too narrow for conventional recruitment to deliver in time.

Interim Legal’s approach

Working closely with the client’s legal team, Interim Legal developed a precise understanding of the remediation workload, the documentation types in scope, and the profile of lawyer suited to programme conditions. Drawing on its network of banking and financial services specialists, Interim Legal identified a bar qualified lawyer whose experience mapped directly onto the affected documentation: several years embedded in a major Swiss bank’s documentation function, reviewing, drafting and negotiating ISDA, repurchase, securities lending and Swiss master agreements with the associated annexes and collateral agreements.

That background combined OTC derivatives and financing depth with hands on negotiation experience across sales, credit risk, and legal stakeholders, alongside regulatory compliance capability spanning KYC and AML. Rather than presenting a broad shortlist, Interim Legal focused on this single evidence-led match, allowing the client to move from briefing to engagement without delay and giving the programme specialist coverage precisely where the regulatory exposure sat.

Outcome

• Rapid deployment: Specialist counsel was embedded into the programme quickly, contributing to contract review and amendment work immediately.
• Documentation depth: The lawyer worked across the derivatives and financing agreements at the centre of the transition, applying direct experience of the agreement types being remediated.
• Extended repeatedly: The mandate was extended more than once across 2021and 2022, reflecting the quality of the match and its sustained value to the programme.
• Regulatory milestones met: The engagement gave the client specialist capacity to progress remediation against fixed regulatory deadlines while the in-house team maintained its business-as-usual workload.