Outsourcing

Get it?  The Complex Discovery eDiscovery Business Confidence Survey is into its third year and the results are in for the Spring 2018 eDiscovery Business Confidence Survey!  As was the case for the 2016 Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall surveys, the 2017 Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall surveys and the 2018 Winter survey, the results for the Spring survey are published on Rob Robinson’s terrific Complex Discovery site.  How confident are individuals working in the eDiscovery ecosystem in the business of eDiscovery?  Let’s see.

As always, Rob provides a complete breakdown of the latest survey results, which you can check out here.  As I’ve done for the past few surveys, I will provide some analysis and, this year, I’ll take a look at all surveys conducted to look at trends over time.  So, this time, I will look at the results for all ten surveys.

The Spring 2018 Survey response period was initiated in March, and continued until registration of exactly 100 responses by last week.  Rob notes that this limiting of responders to 100 (or so) individuals is designed to create linearity in the number of responses for each quarterly survey.  So, in the future, if you want your voice heard, respond early!

This Survey is Consultant Heavy: For the first time ever, those who identified themselves as Consultants lead the way.  Of the types of respondents, 33% were Consultants, followed by Software and/or Services Provider (30%) and Law Firm (29%).  As always, if you count law firms as providers (they’re technically both providers and consumers), this is a very provider heavy survey (which makes perfect sense as they would be most interested in eDiscovery business confidence).  Here’s a graphical representation of the trend over the ten surveys to date:

This is the most provider heavy survey yet at 92% of total respondents!  So, how confident are providers in eDiscovery business confidence?  See below.

More Than Two Thirds of Respondents Consider Business to Be Good: Yowza!  Over two third (68%, to be exact) of respondents rated the current general business conditions for eDiscovery in their segment to be good, with 7% rating business conditions as bad.  That’s a record percentage of “good” votes.  Last quarter, those numbers were 58% and 7% respectively.  Will the positive sentiment continue?  We’ll see.  Here is the trend over the ten surveys to date:

This survey shows the highest percentage of “business is good” respondents ever by 6.2%! Spring 2016 was the previous high.  But, do respondents expect that to continue?  See below.

Revenue and Profit Expectations Six Months From Now Are Strong: Almost all respondents (94%) expect business conditions will be in their segment to be the same or better six months from now (one tick lower than last quarter’s 95%), and the percentage expecting business to be better fell six points to 50%.  Revenue (at combined 96% for the same or better) is three points higher than the last quarter.  Profit expectations (combined 86%) also rose three points from last quarter, with those expecting higher profits at an all-time high of 53%!  Here is the profits trend over the ten surveys to date:

Perhaps the weirdest results this time as both revenue and profits scored higher than general business conditions did.  Go figure.

It’s Budgetary Constraints’ Turn to Be Most Impactful to eDiscovery Business: Budgetary Constraints was the top impactful factor to the business of eDiscovery over the next six months at 22%, with Increasing Volumes of Data next up at 21%.  Data Security was close behind in third at 19% and Increasing Types of Data (16%) was fourth.  Inadequate Technology and Lack of Personnel brought up the rear at 11% each.  The graph below illustrates the distribution over the ten surveys to date:

Once again, Budgetary Constraints and Increasing Volumes of Data are the top two, but for the first time, all six factors were over 10%.  That’s a fairly even distribution.

Even Distribution Between Management and “Rank and File”: For the first time since Summer 2016, the Executive Leadership respondents (35%), Operational Management (34%) and Tactical Execution respondents (31%) were virtually even.  So, this survey reflects even input from execs, managers and “doers”.  Here’s the breakdown over the ten surveys to date:

Clearly, the variance in distribution shows that the respondents for this survey vary from quarter to quarter, so it’s not the same people giving the same answers each time.

Again, Rob has published the results on his site here, which shows responses to additional questions not referenced here.  Check them out.

So, what do you think?  What’s your state of confidence in the business of eDiscovery?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Editor’s Note: Tom O’Connor is a nationally known consultant, speaker, and writer in the field of computerized litigation support systems.  He has also been a great addition to our webinar program, participating with me on several recent webinars.  Tom also wrote a terrific four part informational overview on Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) titled eDiscovery and the GDPR: Ready or Not, Here it Comes (and participated with me on a webcast on the same topic) and wrote another terrific five part informational overview on Understanding eDiscovery in Criminal Cases.  Now, Tom has written another terrific overview regarding Alternative Legal Service Providers titled ALSP – Not Just Your Daddy’s LPO that we’re happy to share on the eDiscovery Daily blog.  Enjoy! – Doug

Tom’s overview is split into four parts, so we’ll cover each part separately.  We covered part one on March 8 and parts two and three last Monday and Thursday.  Here’s the final part, part four.

What does this mean for the future of ALSPs?

According to the Thomson Reuters report, ALSPs are likely to continue to expand as the complexity and specialization of legal services grows. Additionally, we can expect that even more areas of ALSP specialization will develop. Some of the AM Law 50 and Fortune 50 may still choose to keep their work in-house due to their high level of internal resource or pains endured in the past with ALSPs, but the overall market for ALSP services in the rest of the legal profession should continue to expand.

Specifically, the report showed that while only 38 percent of law firms use a litigation support ALSP now, another 15 percent said they would be likely to use them in the next year. And among regulatory risk and compliance services for corporations, the number of users increases 13 percent for new users within the next year.

The biggest driver? Technology. Firms and companies interviewed for the report identified a number of different technologies they hoped ALSPs would use in the near future, including:

• artificial intelligence,
• contract management,
• process mapping, and
• workflow technology.

Eric Laughlin, Managing Director of Legal Services at Thomson Reuters, noted that in many cases, these are technologies that are still in the nascent stages in firms or legal departments, saying:

“I think it shows that while legal departments and law firms either haven’t been able to adopt yet because of budget, or perhaps because of the scale, they have high expectations that ALSPs will use technology to their advantage.”

Will there be growth pains? Undoubtedly.  The Thomson Reuters report mentions several areas that law firms and corporations would like clarified before adopting ALSPs, including:

• 59 percent of law firms that do not use ALSPs cited data security as the main reason,
• 54 percent of law firms cited quality of service as an inhibitor,
• 43 percent of corporate users also cited quality of service as a negative, and
• 43 percent of corporate users cited failure to actually reduce costs as the most negative factor.

The Legaltech New York panel mentioned earlier highlighted these factors, with security getting the most attention. However, the panel suggested these issues may revolve mainly around market education and getting potential customers more familiar with and gaining experience using ALSPs, rather than being insurmountable barriers to continued growth.

The panel also discussed the potential growth in the ALSP market and opined that ALSPs may be viewed as complementary, rather than competitive to firms, helping firms be more efficient and competitive. Since an ALSP is not a law firm, it can often provide one or more services that law firms might offer, but at a lower cost with increased expertise, flexibility, and speed.

Also, because they do not have to adhere to the structure and hierarchy of a law firm, an ALSP can more quickly change business practices to increase efficiency using technology or other innovative practices. Since clients have traditionally preferred having a single point of contact for all their legal business, this would seem to open the door to the opportunity for the law firm or GC to partner with ALSPs to offer cost-effective models for their clients.

What will that future ALSP included hierarchy look like?  First and foremost, it will require good project management skills. Well known legal consultant Casey Flaherty, Principal of the legal operations consulting company Procertas, was recently quoted as saying:

“Most successful users of ALSPs will tell you that… once they took time to train the provider and work to establish a common understanding for the product, the returns on the investment were spectacular.”

So more and more, ALSPs will become partners in legal work more than merely hired vendors. And like all partners in the legal process, the relationship will be ongoing and not simply oriented around one deliverable task.

“The future is now,” Fenwick & West LLP’s Robert Brownstone, who led the Legaltech panel on ALSPs, tells any and everyone who will listen. Brownstone often points out that “it is the rare law firm or legal department that can adequately ramp up – and keep up – on technology, project management and innovation. By planting their flag, ALSPs have provided legal departments not only with a wider array of choices but also a lever to pressure law firms to adjust to the new normal.”

So, while the future appears to be bright for ALSPs, the future also appears to be now.

So, what do you think?  Have you used an ALSP before?  And, as always, please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Also, it’s notable that Tom’s post is today because I (Doug) want to thank JD Supra and its readership for CloudNine being named the Readers’ Choice Top Firm in eDiscovery for the second straight year!  And, Tom and I were named two of the top four authors in the Readers’ Choice awards for eDiscovery!  I’m honored to be named for the second year in a row!  Distribution of our posts via JD Supra has continued to grow our readership greatly and I really appreciate our partnership with JD Supra and thank all of you for reading our blog, whether it’s via JD Supra or the “old fashioned way” via our site!  Thank you so much!

And, today our blog has been around for 7 1/2 years!  And, we are up to 1,942 lifetime posts!  Thanks to all of you of support and readership of the blog and making it all possible.  We wouldn’t write it if y’all didn’t read it!  :o)

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Editor’s Note: Tom O’Connor is a nationally known consultant, speaker, and writer in the field of computerized litigation support systems.  He has also been a great addition to our webinar program, participating with me on several recent webinars.  Tom also wrote a terrific four part informational overview on Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) titled eDiscovery and the GDPR: Ready or Not, Here it Comes (and participated with me on a webcast on the same topic) and wrote another terrific five part informational overview on Understanding eDiscovery in Criminal Cases.  Now, Tom has written another terrific overview regarding Alternative Legal Service Providers titled ALSP – Not Just Your Daddy’s LPO that we’re happy to share on the eDiscovery Daily blog.  Enjoy! – Doug

Tom’s overview is split into four parts, so we’ll cover each part separately.  We covered part one last Thursday and part two on Monday.  Here’s part three.

Who is actually using an ALSP?  And, why are they using them?

Who is actually using an ALSP?  And what is the specific breakdown of these services? The Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute report shows that more than half of law firms and corporations are already using ALSPs with 51 percent of law firms and 60 percent of law departments already using ALSPs in at least one service category.

John Munro, Vice President of National Markets at Blackstone Discovery, was a panelist at a Legaltech New York session discussing the ALSP market. He noted that traditional document review work was once 75 percent of the LPO market but now may be no more than 30 percent of the ALSP market. More and more, ALSPs are playing a bigger role in providing legal services.

Law departments seem to be using ALSPs in specialized areas ranging from regulatory risk & compliance services to specialized legal advice for IP managers and legal researchers.

Law firms however are most likely to use ALSPs for litigation support, especially eDiscovery, document review and pre-litigation investigation.

In a January press release, report co-author Mari Sako, Professor of Management Studies at Saïd Business School shared that:

“ALSPs are not just about lower cost, but also about access to specialized expertise and alternative modes of delivery.”

But why?

ALSPs were originally seen as a good outsourcing choice simply because of affordability in handling tasks without billing out to an attorney. In 2005, it was purely about the cost savings and the labor arbitrage.  And according to the Thomson Reuters report that still seems to be the case when it comes to tasks such as document review. 85 percent of law firms who use ALSPs said they do so in document review for cost savings and 52 percent said they use them to meet peak document review demand without increasing headcount.

While cost savings still remains a driver, the report confirms how ALSPs today are disaggregating legal processes, that is to say they are providing legal expertise not always available in-house and helping enable greater use of current technology.

Outside of document review though, the need for expertise is increasingly a key factor in selecting an ALSP.  About two-thirds of law firms reported using litigation and investigation support services ALSPs and said their primary reason was the need for access to specialized expertise not available in-house; only one-third cited cost savings as a main factor. A good example of this expertise is Attorney Kelly Twigger and her company, ESI Attorneys. She routinely engages as the eDiscovery expert for law firms and corporate clients because she can provide a depth of ESI experience which they simply cannot bring to the table.

In selecting a non-legal task ALSPs, the percentages were close to the same: 63 percent (expertise driven) and 38 percent (cost-driven), respectively.

For in-house counsel, the four most often selected types of ALSP services beyond eDiscovery and document review were regulatory risk and compliance services, specialized legal services, intellectual property management, and legal research services. The primary reason for selection of these services was access to specialized expertise not available in-house and the difference between this reason and cost was even more pronounced then with private firms, at 77 percent for expertise while only 27 percent for cost savings.

In a statement to Legaltech News during the Legaltech conference in New York earlier this year, Eric Laughlin, Managing Director of Legal Services at Thomson Reuters, noted that

“Having matured in their offerings a little bit, these alternative legal service providers are differentiating based on expertise. And that makes corporations more and more comfortable to reach out to them and use them.”

In addition to expertise, an ALSP can do a much higher volume of work than can the average law firm or legal department. For example, an ALSP specializing in eDiscovery may simply have many more tools and much more robust workflow processes for extracting electronic evidence from terabytes of ESI than any firm or GC office.

This higher volume capability allows their expertise to be applied in a manner that is not only faster but less costly.  The result is that law firms now see that subcontracting services to an ALSP can allow them to focus more on their own core competencies. And corporations which have become more focused on reducing outside legal spend see that using a specialized ALSP rather than a law firm may better serve that purpose.

We’ll publish the final part, Part Four – What does this mean for the future of ALSPs? – next Tuesday.

So, what do you think?  Have you used an ALSP before?  And, as always, please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Editor’s Note: Tom O’Connor is a nationally known consultant, speaker, and writer in the field of computerized litigation support systems.  He has also been a great addition to our webinar program, participating with me on several recent webinars.  Tom also wrote a terrific four part informational overview on Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) titled eDiscovery and the GDPR: Ready or Not, Here it Comes (and participated with me on a webcast on the same topic) and wrote another terrific five part informational overview on Understanding eDiscovery in Criminal Cases.  Now, Tom has written another terrific overview regarding Alternative Legal Service Providers titled ALSP – Not Just Your Daddy’s LPO that we’re happy to share on the eDiscovery Daily blog.  Enjoy! – Doug

Tom’s overview is split into four parts, so we’ll cover each part separately.  We covered part one last Thursday.  Here’s part two.

What is an ALSP?

The first consideration in understanding new generation ALSPs is to understand how ALSP is defined. In general, ALSPs are niche companies that specialize in providing such high-demand legal services as:

• Human Resources
• IT Services
• Document Review
• Contract Management
• Litigation Support
• ECA
• Analytics
• Discovery and Electronic Discovery
• Contract Lawyers and Staffing
• Investigation Support and Legal Research
• IP Management
• Due Diligence

Industries such as banking started outsourcing IT services as a means to reduce costs almost 30 years ago. And now businesses and law firms are doing the same thing in the area of document services by turning to these new generation ALSP companies for even routine legal services that are too expensive and time-consuming to do in-house.

According to the Thompson-Reuters Legal Executive Institute report, there are five categories of ALSPs.

• Accounting and Audit Firms that have a large amount of revenue in legal services. They tend to focus on high-volume, process-oriented work that’s complementary to accounting-audit work.
• Captive LPOs that are wholly owned captive operations. Often located in lower-cost regions, they are focused on high-volume process work.
• Independent LPOs, eDiscovery and Document Review Providers who perform outsourced legal work under the direction of corporate legal departments and law firms. They are typically engaged for matter- or project-based work often proactively managed and globally delivered. This category Includes eDiscovery services and document review providers.
• Managed Legal Services Providers that contract for all or part of the function of an in-house legal team. They typically are engaged for ongoing work within scope and proactively managed.
• Contract Lawyers, In-Sourcing, and Staffing Services who are providers of lawyers to companies on a temporary basis. Support can range from entry-level document review to highly skilled and experienced specialists.

So while the term ALSP is a reasonable capstone description for the multiple categories of ALSP specialization, it does appear that using only one term may, in some cases, be an over simplification of a complex grouping of services.

Another characteristic that defines an ALSP is the fact that it is not necessarily a law firm and does not engage in the practice of law nor does it necessarily have to be staffed by lawyers. Because of this characteristic, paralegals, legal assistants, and technical staff with the right type of legal expertise are in great demand at the new generation ALSP.  And more and more work is moving in their direction. According to an October 2013 article in ABA Journal, employment at traditional law firms peaked in 2004 and has declined moderately since then.  During the same time period, employment at ALSPs has doubled.

Although litigation and investigation support ALSPs are the third most-used category of ALSPs for law firms (behind eDiscovery and document review), the report found that they are used by just 28 percent of firms. Twenty-six percent of firms use ALSPs for non-legal factual research and 24 percent of firms use them for specialized legal services.

When breaking down the ALSP services used by corporations, there seems to be even more reluctance to adopt them. Regulatory risk and compliance services are the categories that see the most use proportionally, but even those ALSPs see adoption at only 29 percent. The only other category above 20 percent adoption in corporate legal departments is specialized legal services (21 percent).

Eric Laughlin is the general manager for Thomson Reuters Legal Managed Services. He expects continuing growth for ALSPs, saying this about the report:

“The data says that law firms are recognizing ALSPs for more expertise, so there’s a respect there for what ALSPs are doing. And then their experience in the market is that clients are pushing them more to disaggregate. They’re being asked to look at more models by their clients.”

The numbers in the report bear this out. But, as noted above, the uses go well beyond eDiscovery. ALSP services now extend to a wide variety of activities including not just LPO, managed services, HR, general accounting and so on. David Curle, Director of Strategic Competitive Intelligence for Thomson Reuters Legal, said in another panel at Legaltech that these non-traditional activities provide for roughly $8.4 billion in legal services each year.  While still a fraction of the $700 billion total global spend on legal services, it is an incredibly fast-growing segment of the market.

We’ll publish Part Three – Who is actually using an ALSP and why are they using them? – on Thursday.

So, what do you think?  Have you used an ALSP before?  And, as always, please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Editor’s Note: Tom O’Connor is a nationally known consultant, speaker, and writer in the field of computerized litigation support systems.  He has also been a great addition to our webinar program, participating with me on several recent webinars.  Tom also wrote a terrific four part informational overview on Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) titled eDiscovery and the GDPR: Ready or Not, Here it Comes (and participated with me on a webcast on the same topic) and wrote another terrific five part informational overview on Understanding eDiscovery in Criminal Cases.  Now, Tom has written another terrific overview regarding Alternative Legal Service Providers titled ALSP – Not Just Your Daddy’s LPO that we’re happy to share on the eDiscovery Daily blog.  Enjoy! – Doug

Tom’s overview is split into four parts, so we’ll cover each part separately.  Here’s the first part.

Introduction

One of the biggest topics of discussion at the recent Legaltech® conference in New York was Alternative Legal Service Providers or ALSPs.  I was interested in the topic really because I was confused as to what the term ALSP meant. Like several other people I spoke with at the show, I originally considered an ALSP to be just a newer name that marketers had given to legal process outsourcing or LPO.

LPO was, of course, the exporting of legal services to low-wage markets either overseas (off-shore) or in the United States (on-shore). The LPO trend had been fueled by many factors, including:

• Globalization
• The rising cost of legal services
• The growth of the Internet
• Increased automation of legal processes
• Developments in data security

In my experience, LPO offerings tended to be focused primarily on low cost document coding or data entry and were utilized primarily by law firms. But the recent rise of ALSP services, which have LPO characteristics, seems to be fueled by corporate law departments that are interested in partners providing software built specifically for their legal and compliance needs.

These growth factors for ALSPs are illustrated in a report from The Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute, in partnership with the Georgetown University Law Centre for the Study of the Legal Profession and the University of Oxford Saïd Business School titled The 2017 Alternative Legal Service Study – Understanding the Growth and Benefits of These New Legal Providers (you can download a copy here)  In this global report, more than 800 law firms and corporations were surveyed, and the results indicated that the growing use of a new generation of ALSPs is largely about expertise, not lower costs, as is often assumed.  Other factors in the growing use of ALSPs noted in the study included scalability, client demand for global solutions and greater access to technological innovations.

My focus for the following discussion will be a closer look at the new generation ALSP and the factors that define it.  We will take a look at what an ALSP is, who is actually using an ALSP, why they use them and how they will impact the provision of legal services in the future.

We’ll publish Part 2 – What is an ALSP? – next Monday.

So, what do you think?  Have you used an ALSP before?  And, as always, please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.