Alternative Legal Service Providers Market in US - Industry Outlook and Forecast 2020-2025

This research report on the US alternative legal service providers market covers sizing and forecast, share, industry trends, growth drivers, and vendor analysis. The study includes insights on segmentation by Providers (new law companies, captive LPO, staffing/recruiting and contract lawyer companies, and others), Services (eDiscovery, investigation and litigation support,  contract management, document review and coding, legal research, regulatory risk and compliance, and Others), End-user (law firms and corporations), and Geography (US).

Market Dynamics

The US alternative legal service providers market will grow at a staggering CAGR during the forecast period due to the intense business and regulatory changes driving the need for sweeping, company-wide transformations, and creating expansive hurdles for compliance and legal functions. While alternative legal services are currently in the nascent stage, they are driving a future focus that is centered on the growth and advancement of end-to-end solutions.

Alternative legal service providers increasingly appear on the horizon – they are mostly less expensive than in-house counsel and are better attuned to help confront legal struggles. They can aid with augmenting business operations and are thus gaining popularity. While historically in-house departments acted as low-cost alternatives to traditional law firms, the cost of conducting business and climbing salaries of law professionals is looming threats for in-house law management, thereby increasing the popularity of alternative legal services. Another major driver for their growth in the market has been that these services offer integrated solutions to more than merely legal challenges; they help corporations solve global business challenges (such as risk management, cybersecurity, and data privacy), making them attractive partners.

Snippets

• Intense changes in the business and regulatory landscape are driving the need for sweeping, company-wide transformations, thereby creating expansive hurdles for compliance and legal functions.
• As the distinction between traditional and alternative services is blurring, investing resources in brand definition and legal market positioning is more crucial than to facilitate awareness and understanding.
• The US alternative legal service providers market by eDiscovery is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 24% during the forecast period.
• The new law companies segment is expected to reach over $1.4 billion by 2025.

The US alternative legal service providers market expected to grow at a CAGR of over 23% during the period 2019–2025.

US Alternative Legal Service Providers Market: Segmentation

The market research report includes detailed segmentation by products, services, end-user, and geography.

Insights by Provider

New Law firms have been the most disruptive players in the market, accounting for major work carried out in the document review and litigation spheres. There is a growing trend of building strong SLAs and utilization of performance metrics. With the growing openness of law firms, there comes a growing affinity for a blended approach to deliver services. This approach has been increasingly adopted across firms over the last couple of years.  As law firms, big as well as small, look to reclaim their position in the market, they have been developing in-house alternative legal service providers that can afford them the ability to delve into more services. Major law firms typically have been able to invest in new technology, processes, and talent and can collaborate without disturbing the original practice-centric way of working by developing branches that sell these services. However, this is also working against their proliferation, slowing down the entry of players in the market. Hence, with technology becomes widespread, hybrid players have scaled back on their services offering and shifted focus on developing and offering legal tech to the wider market.

Insights by Services     

The proliferation of the internet and smart device, which have resulted in a data explosion, including social media, e-mails, instant messages, audio clips, voice notes, images. They have all made the collection and review extremely challenging and expensive when performed in-house, thereby driving the demand for tools and professionals outside of the traditional model toward specialty firms and technology companies. Further, security and data privacy regulations are having their effect on the market. As the US is continually refining eDiscovery laws via case rulings and the global privacy trend is having its bearing on American litigators, law teams are under more pressure to keep atop protection or privacy obligations. Hence, the US alternative legal service providers market is evolving at a rapid rate and faces possibilities of AI disruption. In order to survive, vendors need to keep a tab on developments and refine services accordingly. The wave of consolidation that is a result of the presence of a large number of firms is expected to continue during the forecast period.

As several organizations predict an uptick in litigations, the market for litigation and investigation support is expected to grow. Businesses that venture in international trades are being threatened by trade wars, as a result, the environment is likely to be increasingly litigious. Effective preventative and support measures are being put in place progressively more, such as early case evaluation/ resolution and expectations to increase in-house team sizes.

Business relationships have become more intricate in recent years. Organizations are looking to improve operational efficiency and reduce the risk of bringing contract management from an admin arena to the front. The relevant solutions are providing an opportunity to capitalize on innovations in e-signature, collaboration, workflow, contract generation, and analytics. In terms of technology, contract management has not caught up yet. It is largely underutilized due to the lack of sophistication of contract automation software to automate each stage in the draft to the signature process. While alternative legal service providers have created proprietary solutions in-house, they are largely inadequate, and players have been supplementing wherever they have not been able to fill the void manually.

Insights by End-users    

A shift in focus from brand status and services to efficacy, providing high viability on investments. The demand for document review and legal research continues to grow significantly. In an age where customer-centricity and differentiation are vital, several players are increasingly examining cost-benefit trade-offs. They are forsaking rote, administrative work by outsourcing it and focusing on high-value tasks and core competencies to their best potential, thereby increasing demand for alternative legal service providers. Another driver comes as a response to the threat of internal strife. As the industry struggles with talent and demand surpass capacity during episodic events, it is outsourcing certain tasks to reduce damages related to the lack of additional resources. The traditional judicial industry has been battered by stupendous change, and large law firms have been ambushed with evolving technology and the expansion of corporate legal departments. As a result, the employment of alternative legal services is more prominent in large firms than in smaller ones.

Unlike law firms, corporates tend to employ one alternative legal service provider or partner with them along with a law firm. There is a lesser likelihood of using different service provider. This is expected to create a demand for services, which can be “all things to all people.” This has led to the service providers operating in the market taking huge strides to provide high value instead. However, a barrier in the market specifically among small and medium-sized corporations’ departments is the hesitancy to hire managed legal services personnel, especially lawyers. Hence, not only corporations and law firms have increased their use of such service providers, but they have also evolved how they use

 Key Vendor Analysis

Alternative legal service providers have essentially entered the landscape around 2000, evolving with spurts across two time periods: from 1999-2007 wherein outsourcers such as Axiom, Integreon, and Exigent made their way into the market. The market is witnessing a growing number of global law firms, which are imparting credibility to the concept of legal service delivery. With clients increasingly moving further afield in the Rogers Diffusion Curve, lawyers and law firms will account for a less dominant share.

There is however a common, yet largely untrue narrative floating around: that alternative legal service providers are competing with traditional law firms for their spot in the industry, winning some accounts and losing others to each other. Although that is not entirely the case. The competition between the two is more layered. Hybrids of law firms and legal service entities and alternative staffing companies are expected to become a norm, complementing law firms. The contrast is likely to be in terms of AI or technologies which is expected to contribute to the differentiation of new law companies.

Prominent Vendors

• Allen & Overy
• Axiom
• Elevate
• UnitedLex

Other Prominent Vendors – BlackStone Discovery, Clifford Chance, Consilio, Driven, Epiq, Everlaw, Exigent, Greenberg Traurig, Integreon, KLDiscovery, LegalZoom, Lawyers on Demand (LoD), Mindcrest, Reed Smith, Legility, Lumen Legal, Morae Global, Orrick, QuisLex, and Thomson Reuters

 Key Market Insights

The analysis of the alternative legal service providers market sizing and growth opportunities for the forecast period 2020–2025.

• Provides comprehensive insights on the latest industry trends, market forecast, and growth drivers.
• Includes a detailed analysis of market growth drivers, challenges, and investment opportunities.
• Delivers a complete overview of market segments and the regional outlook of the market.
• Offers an exhaustive summary of the vendor landscape, competitive analysis, and key market strategies to gain a competitive advantage in the market.