2019 Highlights: The $10B Alternative Legal Service Providers Market
As 2019 winds down, Legal Current is revisiting milestones and key accomplishments from the Legal business of Thomson Reuters this year. Today we look at the “Alternative Legal Service Providers 2019: Fast Growth, Expanding Use and Increasing Opportunity” report – more commonly known as the ALSP Report.
Released in January, the report highlights how the market for ALSPs is experiencing rapid growth as large law firms and corporate legal departments expand their use of these legal service firms. ALSPs are most commonly used for e-discovery, litigation and investigation support, and legal research.
Below are five key findings of the report:
- The ALSP market has grown to more than $10B. ALSPs make up a $10.7 billion market for legal services – a big step from $8.4 billion in the previous survey two years earlier. Over the next few years, ALSPs are projecting a growth rate of 25 percent.
- Corporate adoption of ALSPs is growing faster than predicted. The growth is especially pronounced for services such as litigation and investigative support, and document review. In some cases, in has taken less than two years for growth to already eclipse five-year projected growth rates.
- Nine in 10 large law firms now use ALSPs. In the report, 87 percent of large law firms surveyed indicated they’re using ALSPs in at least one service category; 81 percent of midsize firms and 57 percent of small firms are doing the same. The use of ALSPs is commonplace among law firms at all levels.
- The Big Four are increasingly competing with law firms. Nearly a quarter (23%) of large law firms surveyed said they had a client use one of the Big Four for work that the law firm had expected to win.
- ALSP use is growing internationally. While the use of ALSPs is greatest in the U.S., growth in the U.K. and Canada is accelerating.
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