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The transformation of the legal marketplace over recent years is partly a result of the emergence of Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs), as well as the expansion of the Big Four into territory previously dominated by traditional law firms. This shakeup in legal technology and services is proving to be beneficial for in-house legal departments.

Atik Ahmed, Head of Legal at Marco Polo Network, says that the rise of ALSPs has led to a greater variety of legal solutions and services for in-house legal teams, which has been a positive development for in-house legal teams such as his own.

“You can look at ALSP provision as being a type of service that will cut down the constituent parts of more complex, larger bits of legal work, and find the best kind of model that will suit that particular instruction. I think that variety is a good thing - if you can really cut through the noise and engage with those models.”

Atik notes that, prior to ALSPs and the entrance of the Big Four accountancy firms (EY, KPMG, PwC and Deloitte) into the legal services marketplace, there was only one option for General Counsel and their in-house legal teams: “Send your piece of work to an external law firm who would bill on an hourly basis.” But as a result of ALSPs and the Big Four entering the legal marketplace, in-house teams now “have a plethora of different options.”

How do the Big Four’s legal services differ from ALSPs?

According to Atik, the legal solutions provided by the Big Four are not inherently different from the services offered by other ALSPs. Instead, they have essentially used the core models and added to them.

“Historically when we look at the Big Four we can see that they all came from an accountancy/audit background and then migrated into legal services arms. I think they leveraged off the models of existing ALSPs and tried to improve on those models. But I don’t naturally see them as being distinct from ALSP provision; I see them as an enhancement of ALSP provision.”

However, the sheer size of the Big Four means that they can offer a large variety of legal services, all under one umbrella. Meanwhile, many ALSPs specialise in very specific and limited legal solutions. So an in-house team might need to use multiple ALSPs for the different parts of a project, whereas they could just have a single point of contact at one of the Big Four.

Deciding whether to use the Big Four as an ALSP

Over recent years there have been increasing pressures on in-house legal budgets. This has led legal teams to consider what work can be kept in-house, what needs to be sent to a traditional law firm and what can be outsourced to an ALSP. Using one of the Big Four instead of a smaller ALSP retains the full-service aspects of a law firm whilst also deploying the advantages of cutting edge technology and their skills in process management.

The Big Four combine technology and specialisation to handle high-volume, low-value legal work much more efficiently than more traditional legal providers - and crucially at a lower price point. As such in-house legal teams who have large scale projects might well find it cheaper to use the Big Four, who can leverage their economies of scale.

Read more about the rise of the Big Four and how they can help in-house legal teams.