Enhance your sales order flow for legal services

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[Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to crafty council's series on alsps alternative legal service providers i mean what even are they in some ways the most simple definition is they're just another service provider that offers the in-house team a way of accessing legal services that's not a traditional law firm emma is that right that's absolutely right there are lots of alsp's out there in the marketplace they tend to fall into three main buckets so the first bucket are the independent alsps and these tend to be the ones that most people think of when they think of an alsp and this is people such as obelisk you then have your second bucket which is the big four accountancy firms so they've changed their model quite recently to offer legal services support alongside their more traditional offerings of accountancy tax auditing consultancy that sort of stuff and then the third bucket you've got are the subsidiaries of mainly large law firms that have been set up mainly in response to the growth in the other two buckets of alsp's so that's people like connexo peerpoint barrio i mean there's quite a variety there isn't there it feels like though is there some kind of consistent thread in the way they offer these services yes there is um i mean you will find that some alsps offer a very broad range of services some are much more niche in their offering but the common theme that runs through them all is they try to use a combination of people processes legal technology innovation data you know pulling all of this together to offer a more creative way perhaps to satisfy the legal services need of a in-house legal team there's also lots of different services so you know they're great because of the way that they're set up and structured for taking perhaps those highly repetitive low-value low-risk type tasks of the desks of the lawyers to allow them to focus on higher value work but equally because they've got such a broad skill set within the alsp they can also be hugely helpful if you're perhaps working through the rollout of some new legal tech innovation or you're just looking for more strategic support perhaps from a project management perspective and the types of work really vary you know you've got your flexible resourcing arms so that's your on-demand lawyers or paralegals they could help you with due diligence contract management project management legal operations support legal tech support there's a huge list out there of different things they could support you with yeah absolutely and so does this kind of innovative approach does that extend to charging as well i mean are we talking billable hour here or or is there something new coming along well i mean there are opportunities to sort of have a pay-as-you-go approach or an hourly approach with alsps perhaps you know if you just need some very short-term resource to cover a staffing problem or you know you've got a very discreet project that you just want a little bit of help with but most commonly you can have a fixed price model for these sorts of projects or work you want to do with them and obviously the benefits of having a fixed price which allows you to have that transparency and clarity about what you're paying for how long it's going to take obviously that helps with budgeting and also the fact that you've agreed a price up front it takes away that worry about a ticking clock and a ramping bill and can allow you more time to to work with your alsp partner and get to know each other without that fear of you know that that rising bill the the talk of kind of process improvement new technology use of data project management this is all kind of stuff that i love it kind of makes me think though shouldn't law firms be doing this that is a question that comes up quite often and and some firms are starting to do that but the issue is most law firms are not traditionally set up in the way that alsp's are to provide that end-to-end support service and that more innovative approach to legal services they tend to be there to advise on the law for a particular matter or issue but that doesn't mean you know they're not waking up to the fact that there are other ways of doing things and as mentioned earlier there are already some subsidiaries out there and we are seeing more flexible resource arms being opened up by law firms um obviously to keep up to speed with what clients want um also in response to to the other competitive elements so you know the big four as i mentioned earlier they're now providing legal services which are potentially taking clients away from your law firm and your independence are now a very viable option for in-house legal teams great i mean this is such a kind of both a complex but also a really developing area and i think hopefully we've kind of shown a bit of a light on it today so thank you pleasure [Music] you