April 2022- Making the Most of Your ALSP Relationship

April 20, 2022

April 2022- Making the Most of Your ALSP Relationship

Alternative legal service providers play an ever-growing part in how law departments function today, with many, like QuisLex, providing services across an array of legal disciplines in large corporate law departments. That said, one of the core functions of ALSPs remains the management and review of documents in large, complex litigations and investigations. 

Organizations engage with outside providers to handle document reviews for two primary reasons: to improve efficiency and subsequently, reduce costs.

But there is much more to be gained by the establishment of a strong relationship between a corporate law department and an ALSP. In a mature relationship where the provider is asked to do more than simply review documents, a consistent and stable approach to how data is managed can reap benefits that go far beyond simple cost reduction.

The recent move to remote and hybrid work environments has only increased the reliance by the eDiscovery industry on contracted attorney resources to perform document reviews. While bidding wars are driving down that contract pricing, some organizations are also intentionally opting for less-experienced temporary reviewers to save money. This may boost the bottom line in the short term, for that specific matter, but this also results in lower quality, less accountable work product. Further, this approach promotes inconsistent output and increased costs overall due to several factors including: 

  • continual training of the revolving door of reviewers who lack any institutional knowledge that could be leveraged,
  • the lack of standardized processes and controls that could be developed and enforced over time across departments, and
  • more expensive law firm invoices due to outside counsel needing to clean up the inconsistent work product coming from these temporary resources.

By fostering a deeper relationship with a trusted ALSP, they become an integral part of the control environment of a great legal function from which in-house teams can build a centralized hub of standard processes and institutional knowledge. These partners provide a beacon of consistency and stability over long periods of time and across all departments of an organization. In a sea of constant change, a centralized ALSP can be the lighthouse to keep all parties on the right path and significantly enhance the legal department’s effectiveness.

Interested in more? QuisLex’s Danielle Noonan & Joe Polizzotto explore these topics further in the article, “How to Achieve Consistency and Stability in an Ever-Changing Sea of eDiscoverypublished by Legaltech News.

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