There is no question that Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs) are a formidable presence in today’s legal market. The increase in ALSP engagement is largely due to a change in client expectations. Clients now demand high-quality, technically proficient legal services with transparent, predicable pricing. To meet these demands, both law firms and corporate legal departments have turned to ALSPs to help increase their efficiency and proficiency, while decreasing their overall costs. But is an ALSP always the most economical option?  Many law firms say no. Over the past several years, legal technology has evolved to include solutions that allow law firm attorneys to provide the highly specialized services that ALSPs cannot - without sacrificing value or efficiency

In terms of AI-enabled tech solutions that law firms can deploy in-house, several  use cases come to mind. First, automated contract review and management tools have   become an increasingly popular way for firms to cut legal costs and improve the contract workflow process. In addition, eDiscovery solutions continue saving firms time and money through the automated processing, reviewing, tagging and production of electronic documents.  Finally, firms also have access to litigation support technology, forensic analysis tools and spend analysis solutions, which enable benchmarking against industry standards.

 Perhaps one of the most significant   reasons to keep your technology solution in-house, is to deliver the highest quality legal service for the most reasonable price. If your firm provides superior legal services in the most complex matters at highly competitive rates, in-house solutions are arguably a sounder investment than an ALSP engagement. Doing so will strengthen the firm’s overall service offering and allow medium-sized and big law firms to leverage potentially valuable matter data.

The following are a few examples of the long-term benefits your firm may reap from investing in AI-enabled technology:

1.       AI-enabled tools augment lawyers’ skills. Some of the most developed automated solutions can help lawyers build cases faster. With capabilities in pattern recognition, natural language processing and descriptive analytics, lawyers can be more efficient and profitable.

2.       AI analytics tools help law firms more accurately price their services. With the advent of legal spend analysis, e-billing and automated budgeting, legal professionals have a greater understanding than ever about how to price and budget new and existing matters.  

3.       Increased efficiency is always helpful. Scalable process improvements create more competitive offerings, which ultimately improves firm profitability.

If you would like to learn  more about the factors law firms consider when  deciding between ALSP engagement vs in-house technology, please join our webinar entitled ALSPs vs AI: Investing for Workflow Efficiencies happening Thursday Aug. 12 at 1:00 PM EDT (1:00 AM PDT).