What is an Alternative Legal Service Provider?

If you’ve spent any time looking to expand or improve your legal offerings, you may have come across the term “alternative legal service provider.” For many practices, these services, commonly referred to as ALSPs, have become the new norm. They increase firm IP – for example, by adding expertise from contract paralegals to the matter – and do so at an affordable cost.

Especially for partners going solo or opening their own private practices, ALSPs provide a path forward. Hiring staff in-house isn’t always an option for the firm, especially not with the expertise their clients expect. ALSPs allow the firms to provide more competitive pricing without sacrificing quality and efficiency.

What is an ALSP, and how can it benefit your legal practice? In short: ALSPs take over the burden of tasks attorneys need not perform or provide additional expertise to assist a firm in a given matter or for long-term engagements through use of contract attorney and contract paralegals. This saves the attorney time, money, and boosts their firm’s IP, all at once.

Defining the Alternative Legal Service Provider

An ALSP is defined as any service that could normally be provided in-house by a law firm that is instead performed by an outside entity. It is not a law firm; it operates as an outsourced model that law firms can leverage to perform tasks that are too costly or time-consuming to perform in-house.

ALSPs offer a specialized service at-scale to meet with the demand of legal practices. With specialized tools, processes, and even technology at their disposal, an alternative legal services provider offers high quality service at affordable prices. As a result, ALSPs can outperform on the same tasks that are normally undertaken in-house.

The Thomson Reuters 2019 Alternative Legal Service Providers report found the top five services firms use ALSPs for are:

E-discovery
Legal research
Litigation and investigation support
Document review/coding
Non-legal/factual research

As the legal profession pivots from practicing in traditional law office space to operating from shared spaces, hybrid offices, and even the fully virtual law office, ALSPs provide expertise and efficiency for attorneys and law firms.

An Alternative Legal Service Provider Benefits Any Size of Legal Practice

A 2017 study by Georgetown Law School reported that over half of all law firms are using alternative legal service providers in some capacity.

While larger practices have been leveraging these services for a while to increase firm efficiency and lower overhead cost on work produced, partner law practices, solo attorneys, and boutique law firms can all leverage ALSPs to compete.

Private practice law firms are most likely to use the following types of ALSPs (as defined by Thomson Reuters):

Independent Legal Process Outsourcers (LPOs) – perform project or matter based work on behalf of the law firm
Managed services providers – usually handle on-going work for the law firm; like a contracted in-house legal team
Contract and staffing services – provide temporary staffing to the firm, from legal admins to skilled workers like attorneys and paralegals

For partner and solo practices that operate on limited resources or do not have the budget to hire full-time staff, an ALSP can also alleviate time spent on recruitment, training, and management of employees. Additionally, providers offer fully qualified employees that can immediately benefit your legal practice.

Alternative Legal Services Provided by Amata Law Office Suites

Solo and partner practice law firms rely on flexibility and adaptability to achieve success. At Amata Law Office Suites, we understand that time isn’t the only thing on your mind – quality of work and budgetary concerns come into play. We are committed to providing you with the services you need to accomplish the goals of your clients and focus on the practice of law, at a rate that assists your firm with running profitably and with expertise that contributes to your firm IP.

Our Legal Support Team Services

Expert Paralegal Support

For client matters, legal projects, and billable work, the Amata paralegals are some of the best in Chicago and led by Tisha Delgado, Chicago Paralegal Association President and litigation and e-discovery expert. Our paralegals average 27 years of experience each and have developed expertise in specific areas of law. As a team they provide support such as locating defendants and witnesses; preparing third-party subpoenas; Westlaw and LexisNexis legal research; document review; e-discovery and data collection assistance and more.

Additionally, they are knowledgeable on the inner workings of the courts, allowing them bring an efficiency to tasks like document processing that proves burdensome to many attorneys.

Better yet, their time is entirely billable by the firm back to the client and offered at cost-effective rates.

Legal Admin Support

For time-consuming tasks and attorneys looking to focus their own time on billable work, the Amata legal admin team steps in. They assist over 700 Chicago attorneys with client billing inputs, calendar management, mail processing, Microsoft office assistance and more.

Their assistance allows attorneys and firms to focus on the practice of law and relieve stress by outsourcing this non-billable work to a trusted partner at an affordable rate. Legal admin support is charged by the minute, not the hour, at Amata and fixed-fee items like court runs are also available.

Live Legal Receptionist Services

For solo attorneys, partner legal practices and boutique law firms, client intake processes are crucial for continued business and time-management. The Amata Live Legal Receptionist team brings proved process to firms just starting out or looking to improve call-management and client-intake efficiency.

Greetings, transferring processes, screening, and client-intake are customized specifically for the law firm. The team is also available at extended hours. While the typical workday is from 9-5, prospective clients don’t always operate on the same schedule – the Amata legal receptionist services operate from 7AM-10PM CST.

Amata Law Office Suites also offers office space for like-minded lawyers to collaborate and work. We provide our lawyers with comprehensive solutions to many of the problems they face on a day-to-day basis. Alternative Legal Services are offered as part of our model and allow solo or private law firms the resources they need to achieve success in their law practices.