Alternative legal services providers are an excellent option for businesses looking for efficiency at a lower cost. They have a strong client focus and can manage large volumes of work quickly and effectively.
They can also provide specialized support in particular areas of law, something that many corporate legal departments need help to do with limited resources.
Legal Process Management
For corporate legal teams looking to scale their processes, ALSPs are an increasingly viable option. In particular, ALSPs can help them process high volumes of incoming documents. This is particularly critical in mass tort litigation settings, where a legal team might be processing large volumes of plaintiff fact sheets and complaints that must be processed quickly. Without a robust and efficient workflow, these processes can become overwhelming, leading to expensive inefficiencies for law firms and their clients.
The ability to manage this routine, time-intensive tasks can free up legal organizations to focus on more strategic work that aligns with their clients’ business needs. This is why many big law firms partner with these providers to offer a broader range of service offerings. These include legal research, regulatory risk and compliance support, eDiscovery support, and technology consulting. These services, which can be delivered at a fraction of the cost of traditional law firms, can dramatically transform legal business processes.
Litigation Support
Rather than hiring a full-time paralegal to handle legal support tasks, firms are turning to ALSPs to provide expertise in specific areas. In addition, these organizations often offer cost efficiencies and a high level of consistency that traditional law firms can’t match.
Moreover, a new generation of ALSPs offers services beyond traditional eDiscovery and administrative work. These third-generation providers can deliver business intelligence by leveraging technology to help clients navigate complex issues.
Regardless of the size or complexity of the matter, it’s clear that ALSPs are no longer just an alternative solution; they are now a regular option for both law firms and corporate legal departments. As ALSPs continue to innovate and improve their offerings, they will surely be a mainstay in the industry. For more information on how Velocity can assist you with your legal support needs, contact us today!
Compliance Support
When ALSPs first emerged in the 1990s and 2000s, they aimed to take on low-value support work that legal firms typically outsourced to lower-cost regions like India. This included tasks such as document review, M&A due diligence, and other routine work that tended to be time-consuming and costly for law firms.
Now, ALSPs are taking in a broader range of tasks and challenging traditional law firm business models. The best can provide high-quality, defensible work products at a fraction of the cost and turnaround time.
Corporate legal departments are increasingly tapping into the services of ALSPs like Intuitive Edge, with regulatory risk and compliance and legal research as the top two use cases. This is an ample opportunity for companies that can offer multi-disciplinary solutions that deliver strategic value to the legal function and the wider business.
Specialized Support
Initially, ALSPs attracted prospective clients who wanted lower-cost legal services like standardized federal bankruptcy filing aid and legal assistance with property disputes. But now, companies and law firms rely on ALSPs for highly specialized, in-demand support services like eDiscovery processing and document review.
These businesses are often smaller and more focused on one or two specific legal tasks and can offer more tailored services than law firms. This makes them perfect for complex, in-demand specialized legal support services.
In the US, these specialist providers now represent a $10.7 billion corner of the legal services market. This is a big increase from just a few years ago when they were still considered an alternative to traditional law firm work. The use of specialist legal providers is likely to continue to grow. This will be driven by increasing demand for legal support and a desire to reduce overall costs. It will also be encouraged by advances in generative AI, allowing lawyers to focus on higher-level matters while reducing the number of repetitive, low-level tasks they have to perform.
