Managing Legal
The Point
Last Friday, Bloomberg Law reported survey findings supporting the same conclusion I reached in a post two weeks ago:
“While these results indicate that most respondents are using ALSPs [“alternative legal services providers”, or “law companies”], it’s interesting that they’re being used for a relatively small proportion of an organization’s workflow, despite the specialized services and cost-saving potential ALSPs offer.”
This Matters to Your Business
The survey, with its data and graphs, can be found here.
Rachael Pikulski, Legal Analyst at Bloomberg Law and Vanderbilt Law School graduate, puts it this way:
“While these results indicate that most respondents are using ALSPs, it’s interesting that they’re being used for a relatively small portion of an organization’s workflow, despite the specialized services and cost-saving potential ALSPs offer. And when the data is broken down further by firm versus in-house, firms are outsourcing work at an even lower rate than corporations.”
Because …
Ms. Pikulski explains ALSPs’ potential for the corporate law function:
“As someone who previously worked at an ALSP, I observed first-hand how the benefits can outweigh any perceived disadvantages. Concerns about quality, confidentiality, costs, and control are understandable, but ALSPs often allow organizations to leverage specialized expertise, lessen attorneys’ demanding to-do lists, and utilize a more cost-efficient workflow.”
CFOs and the rest of the C-suite need to press their corporate law functions to tap the cost efficiencies, speed, and accuracy offered by ALSPs and law companies for routine, recurring legal tasks. In-house law departments and law firms, for the most part, are not doing so.