For years, the legal industry has tried to rebrand the Alternative Legal Services Provider moniker (ALSP). Some ALSPs call themselves “Law Companies,” others “Legal Tech Innovators,” and many shy away from the ALSP acronym entirely, fearing it sounds too commoditized or “less skilled.”
At Integreon, we take a different view: There is no shame in the name. The reality for general counsel and legal ops leaders at Global 1000 companies isn’t about what we call ourselves – it’s about the work that needs to get done. As legal departments face mounting pressure to transform without an incremental budget, the “alternative” isn’t just a category; it’s a strategic necessity
That said, not all ALSPs are created equal. To build a successful alternative legal services partner strategy, you first have to recognize the five archetypes currently occupying the market and their respective strengths and weaknesses.
The Five Archetypes of ALSPs
Understanding the landscape helps you identify why some so-called transformations never actually move the needle.
1. The Single-Threaded Providers
These are the specialists. They do one thing – contracts, IP, or compliance – and they do it well. While they are useful for discrete projects, they lack the platform breadth required to address the broad spectrum of support needed across practice areas. If you have broad needs, you have to go through the procurement dance all over again to find a new partner.
2. The eDiscovery Silos
Born out of the litigation boom, these companies handle end-to-end eDiscovery at scale. However, their expertise is often confined to that single bucket. They aren’t set up to manage the business of law or the repeatable, global, routine work that happens across your commercial and corporate functions.
3. The Pure Offshorers
These providers lead with one value proposition: labor arbitrage. They offer India-only or other low-cost market delivery models with limited on-shore oversight or delivery options. While the price point is attractive, they often lack the onshore “glue” to act as a true strategic partner or to cover multiple time zones and languages to meet the needs of global companies.
4. Staffing Companies
These providers do meet the needs of large global legal departments for staffing coverage that arises with unexpected departures or maternity leaves. However, the longer the tenure of the staffing coverage the less attractive the ROI for these providers. They also rarely help transform how the services is delivered by optimizing processes, creating content or leveraging technology.
5. The Consultancies
These providers are excellent at high-level strategy. They will spend months analyzing your spend, interviewing your stakeholders, and ultimately delivering a beautiful 50-page roadmap for transformation. The problem? Once the deck is delivered, they’re often done or too expensive to continue. Without the boots on the ground to execute the proposed changes, the heavy lifting of implementation falls to your already overworked team.
The Fifth Path: The Alternative Legal Services Platform
At Integreon, we believe the ideal partner isn’t a silo, it’s a platform.
Most large legal departments have a middle tier of work: it’s repeatable, “playbookable,” and global. It doesn’t require the $1000+-an-hour hammer of a white-shoe law firm, but it’s too high-volume for your in-house team to handle without impacting capacity to work on more strategic matters, including focusing on core work that otherwise gets sent to law firms.
We lean into our ALSP model to provide the targeted resources and tech and process enablement your team needs, streamlining operations so even the most over-burdened legal departments run smoothly and at scale. A platform approach offers:
- Self-Funded Transformation: By taking out costs in routine areas (like document review or high-volume contracting), you can reinvest those savings into adding core skill sets or needed technologies.
- Global Support: Ability to provide global support to meet the needs of your practice groups with the requisite quality and transparency required. A platform scales across borders.
- Execution over Ideation: We don’t just deliver the deck. Our SMEs understand the “art of the possible” and move immediately into execution.
- Agility and Scale: Ability to quickly scale and deploy support to handle large projects, volume spikes or unexpected regulatory compliance matters.
What is Your Alternative Legal Strategy?
If you approach an ALSP asking for a specific service, you’ll get a specific result. But if you step back and ask, “What is our strategy for the work that shouldn’t be with a firm and can’t be handled in-house?” you unlock a new roadmap to profitability and efficiency.
We aren’t a silo-ed provider, a pure outsourcer or just a consultancy. We are the purest form of the ALSP: a partner designed to help you reclaim your time and your budget. Contact us to learn more.
About the author
Gabriel Buigas leads Legal and Compliance Solutions at Integreon and brings more than 25 years of experience in the legal industry, holding both in-house legal and executive roles at a leading alternative legal services provider (ALSP). His depth of experience as both a consumer and a provider of legal servicesoffers clients invaluable real-world insights and best practices.