If you’ve ever considered expanding or improving your legal offerings, the term “alternative legal service provider” may be familiar. These services, commonly called ALSPs, have evolved into the new standard for numerous practices. An ALSP is any service that a law firm could formerly offer internally but is currently provided by a third party. It is not a law firm; nonetheless, it uses an outsourcing model that law firms sometimes use to undertake work that would be too costly or time-consuming to handle internally.
ALSPs offer a highly specialized service to meet the needs of law firms. A supplier of alternative legal services provides high-quality services at affordable rates because they have specialized tools, protocols, and technology at their disposal. As a result, ALSPs are more adept at doing equivalent activities than internal employees. For more information about the advantages of nontraditional legal solutions for law firms, keep reading.
Specialization
The primary business of alternative legal service providers is providing legal help services. As a result, the staff members are knowledgeable in that particular high-volume duty. This is distinct from law firms, where providing support services is just one part of concluding a case. Additionally, attorneys and paralegals who give their time to work at ALSPs are more inclined to care about their careers than associates who are impatiently anticipating the day they will be counseled and relieved of responsibilities like research.
Advanced Technology Use
ALSPs have an advantage over legal firms due to the absence of the billable hour: “the incentive to optimize their productivity.” The best example is how the ALSP business model incorporates cutting-edge technology to save clients time and money.
ALSPs use various cutting-edge technologies, making them especially advantageous for corporate legal departments that don’t currently have the funds to purchase legal management software.
Corporate Legal Divisions Might Focus on Adding Value
ALSPs meet a clear and growing need for flexible legal solutions. They enable the matching of obligations with services for their corporate legal clients. Initially, high-volume approaches were employed, but they are now increasingly used to satisfy specialized requirements. Their goods can be integrated into a customer’s existing internal structure. Corporate legal departments may, however, outsource their regular or high-volume jobs to an ALSP, which may do this work more efficiently and cutting-edge. Both strategies save costs, but more importantly, they may free up in-house legal personnel, allowing them to focus on complex legal issues and provide the company with more proactive support.
Less Legal Expense and Greater Cost Certainty
You don’t have to worry about bill padding or additional hours costing you more money because ALSPs don’t bill based on the time they spend on the job. This departure from the hourly method also aids in keeping the integrity of your budget. Unforeseen enormous accruals won’t sidetrack you because you pay beforehand.
Greater Quality Control
In addition to using automation and AI to expedite labor, ALSPs follow a structured process to complete related tasks. A lawyer’s core competence does not often include using project management abilities to supply legal services. This creative approach leads to more organized procedures, producing better-quality work and more work completed on schedule.
Conclusion
It’s time to look at other law firms’ alternative options if you find that low-level, high-volume legal chores are exhausting your budget or your in-house staff. Your legal expenditure data may be used to research alternative legal service providers that provide such services and identify the activity that costs the most time and money. By comparing the costs of the ALSPs on your shortlist with those of the current vendors, carry on utilizing this data-driven strategy. This will undoubtedly provide you with clear information so you can make the finest financial decisions.
