How ALSPs can help drive a smarter legal ops strategy

Legal departments are now regularly using ALSPs to streamline their delivery models and take on business-as-usual (BAU) work, freeing them up internally to focus on more challenging and time-sensitive tasks.

Increasingly though the pressure on in-house teams to stay ahead of the competition, provide better value and more efficient service offerings is encouraging them to look at alternative delivery models more broadly. The answer to the problem: a legal operations strategy that ensures the team operates as efficiently as possible and that the value of function is appropriately articulated to senior stakeholders. Businesses recognise that ALSPs can offer an unrivalled blend of lawyers and consultants, as well as a more flexible and often smarter approach to legal ops and tech-enabled delivery.

A successful legal ops strategy first requires identifying the gaps that need to be filled to help your team and business thrive. It must recognise your business’ aims, including what cost savings you want to make and when, what data you need to inform better business decisions, and how you might want to use artificial intelligence (AI). It is critical to assess what type of legal work your department delivers in terms of volume, value and risk, and how it is delivered, whether through your own team, through external lawyers, ALSPs or tech-enabled solutions. Lastly, your operating model should determine how you can deliver the work most effectively in line with your overarching business aims.

ALSPs’ strategic capabilities lie in helping in-house legal teams pinpoint their needs, their budget and other priorities, and ultimately how they can work in partnership with the business to meet broader corporate goals. Artificial Intelligence, for example, is being used by businesses across all industries and sectors to automate tasks, drive efficiencies and cut costs, but it should only be used where it truly adds value.

Clients are increasingly trying to understand how AI can transform their businesses. In our experience, ASLPs can help by outlining a range of tools that we’ve seen have an impact for in-house legal teams. The additional value ALSPs can add is they can also help legal teams optimise the processes, workflows and documents that will feed AI tools. This is an essential step as the value added by using AI will only be as good as the quality of the processes, workflows and documents it draws from. 

Many ALSPs, especially managed legal services, will draw on legal experts who have worked in-house themselves, therefore making them ideally placed both to identify and foresee the pain points and even stakeholder resistance that many legal teams face on a day-to-day basis. Simple improvements, such as signature contract automation platforms, can reduce unnecessary ‘legal bottlenecks’, while implementing appropriate risk management and mitigation measures, such as automated approval processes, can significantly boost stakeholder satisfaction.

By offering a holistic, lawyer-led service that is underpinned by technology, ALSPs can also work hand-in-hand with in-house counsel to design processes and a legal ops strategy that is closely tailored to what they actually need as they have sat in their shoes before. They have a heightened understanding of the types of subscription models that are best suited to their needs and the budget constraints they face, as well as the corporate objectives of the wider business.

Given managed legal services are underpinned by technology, this enables data-led insights and contract intelligence that in-house teams typically do not have access to, helping them advise the business as a strategic partner, rather than be seen as a cost centre. This can give in-house teams much greater predictability in their budgets and enable them to decide where and when their money is best spent across the financial year.

Flexible resourcing models can also be an effective way to allocate a mix of high-level and lower-level resources depending on a project’s specific needs. Highly trained paralegals can often deliver lower-risk, time-intensive tasks just as or even more efficiently than in-house teams, without compromising quality.

As our experience has shown, in this way ALSPs can offer the flexibility in resourcing, underpinned by technology and AI, to enable high-volume mandates to be completed at a competitive price point, while maintaining the necessary lawyer-led oversight to ensure quality outcomes for clients.

In one recent example, an in-house team came to us with a resourcing need. We were able to offer the same high-quality work by providing a team of commercial paralegals supervised by lawyers at the escalation point. The cost to the business was the same, but the lower paralegal rates allowed our team to work more hours and get through more tasks in that time, resulting in significantly better value for the client. Although the offering may not have been what the client initially had in mind, by adopting a creative approach to the resourcing conundrum, the project was ultimately completely on time, within budget and we greatly exceeded the clients’ initial expectations in terms of final output.

The use of lower-cost jurisdictions to carry out process-driven legal work may provide an even more cost-effective resourcing solution, provided appropriate quality control measures and oversight are in place. However, both clients and providers need to be receptive to potential new resourcing models like these to best optimise existing processes and boost productivity.

A continuous improvement mindset is also critical. ALSPs can help by conducting regular stress testing, proposing changes and solution-focused alternatives to reassure clients, but in-house teams also need to fully engage with the processes and opportunities available if they are to truly maximise their productivity through legal operations.

A report (PDF 31 pages / 1,031KB) published last year by Thomson Reuters revealed that 45% of legal departments that have external legal panels and use ALSPs included at least one law firm-affiliated ALSP on their panel, and 25% included an independent ALSP. Having an ALSP on panel or having a dedicated ALSP panel may not be right for every legal department, but it’s an excellent way of having a ready-made list of providers at clients’ disposal to take on different legal tasks, thus helping them allocate resources more strategically across the year.

For forward-thinking legal departments considering aligning their legal strategy to their corporate strategy, early investment with the right partner can pay dividends. A successful legal ops strategy is not just about technology, it’s about investing in and integrating people and processes that drive cost-saving measures. By leaning on ALSPs, businesses can benefit from a lawyer-led service that prioritises continuous improvement from the outset.