3 Ways an ALSP can help to Reduce Costs and Increase Value in Your Legal Department or Law Firm.

With many companies in their recovery and rebound phase following the challenges that Covid has presented over the past 18 months, value innovation has become a central focal point.  In this ‘next normal’ business operating models are being transformed to adapt to changing demands, with many leaders being challenged to think and do things differently.  

Legal is being asked more and more to demonstrate their value to the business.  Many lawyers naively believe their value cannot be easily measured or demonstrated with data analytics.  But if they look around at other departments of their company - Finance, HR, IT, Sales – value is demonstrated everyday by metrics and they’re less likely to be asked to prove it.  Legal can definitely learn a thing or two from other departments’ within a business. 

While there are a number of ways to demonstrate value, here are KorumLegal’s three suggested solutions.   

1. Legal Operations – take a look at your Process & Tech for optimisation and transformation 

Legal operations should be the backbone of any legal department.  A coherent legal operating model gives you the structure and toolkit needed to ensure that your business operates efficiently and effectively, regardless of whether it is a 1-person or 1000-person legal team.  Building internal capabilities to build, assess and transform, for example, processes, data, costs, change and technology within a team can be critical for success.  It helps with your teams output – faster, better, efficient, effective, data driven, cheaper – and it ensures that the legal department is a value driver and business-partner rather than a roadblock to business growth.  In 2019, 74% of GCs who invested in legal operations saw efficiency increase by between 15% to 50%.  See our case studies for examples of how our Process + Tech and Legal Operations consulting can help optimise or transform your value-add.  

Tip: Start the ball rolling ASAP is key.  Speak to us about your pain points and challenges and we can work with you to co-design a plan and solution.  Also, beware of going straight to technology solutions without first properly assessing your existing processes and infrastructure.  

2. Managed Legal Services (MLS) – this is your outsourced support solution 

MLS is the outsourcing of projects or specific work streams to a third party to manage and deliver a project or solutions.  An MLS partner acts as an extension of an in-house team and works closely with them to ensure the solutions and delivery model is aligned to business needs.  Managed services has been common practice for decades in other areas of business such as technology and IT and even finance.  MLS incorporates people, process and technology in the legal space.  People resources to manage and complete required decision making in a project; optimised processes for high quality and efficient delivery; and leveraging technology for automation where possible.   From a budget perspective MLS can provide savings of up to 60% and significantly increase value for business stakeholders.  See our case studies for examples of how MLS can be adopted.  

Tip: There are many providers all with different offerings and price points.  It’s important to do your research and speak to a range of experts to understand what you want and need and how much you should be paying.

3. Flexible People resourcing – this is your cost effective secondment resource that can be a quick fix during spike capacity periods or to fill hiring or capability gaps 

This is not new, it’s been available in the industry for more than a decade, by law firms and ALSPs alike.  However, the market use case has changed in the last few years.  It’s still used for capacity support, but more and more it’s been used more strategically.  In 2019, 71% of GCs used ALSPs for specialist expertise, with risk and compliance being the biggest growth area for this resource.  In 2021, 79% of law firms said that have used ALSPs for better cost-efficiency.  It can be extremely cost effective – 33% saving per day when compared to an internal hire (when accounting for all-in costs). See examples of our case studies here. 

Tip:  Be clear about what you want and move quickly.  Consulting moves quickly, with consultants’ availability changing depending on demand.  Having processes set up to ensure you can move quickly to decision ensures you get the best talent for the work.  

If you want to learn more about the above, we love a chat and a coffee, so please reach out.