ALSP (Alternative Legal Service Providers) is an acronym increasingly heard in the field of legal services. This is due to the profound transformation that the legal sector is undergoing, prompting service providers to explore more efficient ways to meet market needs.
The current challenges of legal services
Today's economy can be defined as unstable. Disruptive companies are changing market rules every few years, and the digital economy impacts companies' cost structures so deeply that it is not viable to stick to traditional models.
These constant transformations push the Legislative Powers of all States (including international or transnational) to adapt the regulatory framework to the new risks and opportunities. But legal changes always lag behind market evolution, so the result is an expansion (in number and complexity) of the regulatory framework applicable to different sectors, which is incapable, despite its growth, of responding to novel situations created by the economic and digital activity.
As a result, legal services evolve at a frenzied pace:
- Areas that did not even exist until a few years ago are occupying the main growth rates in the sector (such as compliance).
- Large clients need their legal service providers to be more proactive and control tools not strictly linked to legal knowledge. In this sense, the use of technology or business management skills stand out.
- Furthermore, the consumer of legal services demands a transparent pricing policy based on the value supplied by the provider.
As a result, industry operators are changing the way they provide legal services. These pioneers are known as “non-traditional law firms” or ALSPs.
Definition: What are ALSPs?
ALSPs (Alternative Legal Services Providers) are operators of the legal sector that provide legal services from a different position than the traditional one. Alert to the evolution of the digital economy and the new needs of the market, they are committed to a more agile methodology, a closer relationship with the client and the intensive use of technologies that facilitate their work.
Hence, these are not traditional offices. ALSPs approach the provision of legal services from a versatile prism:
- They usually work with professionals elastically attached to their structure. Thus, they are not linked to the traditional legal firm when entrusting professionals with complex or specialized tasks. Allowing them to create ad hoc teams specialized on the matter.
- In the case of the standardizable task, they can manage them through digital tools saving time and reducing human error. These tasks can be supervised by a qualified professional to ensure their accuracy.
- Also, they incorporate professionals with profiles that are not strictly legal-related, which can help with other areas such as obtaining financing, conducting market studies and prospects or selecting personnel.
- The aforementioned, allows the cost structure to be more flexible. Offering not only more technical and streamlined service but also helping to reduce the fees and expenses the client must face, assessing them in advance and offering closed and affordable prices.
ALSP Examples
Among the most common features of current ALSPs we find:
- Managed Services. They allow the subcontracting or outsourcing of certain functions or processes. This way, the main company optimizes its expenses by accessing highly specialized services providing staff, software and instruments that it could not acquire with its resources otherwise.
- Legal Process Outsourcers. They allow you to outsource the legal department, offering you the same benefits as if you had an in-house department but more economically and flexibly.
- Auditing firms. They offer high-level auditing services, separating them from traditional firms so that any company can afford them.
- Hiring or staffing. They manage human resources allowing coverage of specific needs, tackling specific projects or locating highly specialized profiles.
- Legal interim management service provider. They integrate highly experienced collaborators in companies organization, covering work leave, work peaks or other transitory needs.
- Legaltech service provider. They develop and implement digital solutions to optimize the office or company operations, speeding up and optimizing results while reducing costs.
- Contract Management. They audit, prepare, interpret, defend and execute contracts, guaranteeing the company's legal security and avoiding legal recourses.
Staffing or project work
Our task at Attolon, as ALSP, is to offer new possibilities for contracting legal services. We are framed within the concept of staffing or project work, forming customized legal teams adapted to our client's needs.
Custom work teams design offers flexibility to the client, liberating him from the structure of their own legal department or the traditional law firm hired so far.
- We take care of creating a specialized legal department capable of adapting to the client's specific needs, achieving savings of up to 40% in its cost structure, avoiding fixed contracts and offering a transparent and streamlined pricing policy.
- To do so, we study and plan, with the client's involvement, the best way to achieve their objectives. Of course, this process entails stages of performance evaluation and quality control.
- In a few days, we can form a team of professionals set up to gather the profiles the client needs at that time. And if your needs or objectives change in the future, you can rethink the team and change it to fit your interests.
It is, in short, a new way of approaching the provision of legal services. At Attolon, we do not believe in monolithic departments or systems in which performance or profitability cannot be evaluated nor corrected.As ASLP, we provide adaptable and customized teams in tune with our client's goals. We provide highly professional advice even if the client's goals change over time. All this without the costs and limitations of traditional consulting. Do you want to try the legal services of the future?
