XDD Ancillary and Support Services Survey |
XDD Ancillary and Support Services Survey
Introduction
Organizations are increasingly turning to service providers other than law firms for some legal ancillary and support services. The most obvious example is eDiscovery work, but some organizations also turn to non-law firm providers for assistance with contract management, patent management, litigation and trial support, and other routine activities. These collaborations are structured in a variety of ways, including:
1) Seeking and selecting help on a project-by-project basis
2) Vetting and working with a pool of preferred providers
3) Aggregated outsourcing of all work to a single provider
Aggregated outsourcing may be referred to as “managed services” or “legal process outsourcing” (LPO). Traditionally, managed services referred to the handling of all aggregated work of a given type in a managed, tracked, and iteratively-improved way, and legal process outsourcing referred to the complete outsourcing of a routine internal legal process to an external service provider (just like business process outsourcing). Today, the terms are used somewhat interchangeably.
1) Seeking and selecting help on a project-by-project basis
2) Vetting and working with a pool of preferred providers
3) Aggregated outsourcing of all work to a single provider
Aggregated outsourcing may be referred to as “managed services” or “legal process outsourcing” (LPO). Traditionally, managed services referred to the handling of all aggregated work of a given type in a managed, tracked, and iteratively-improved way, and legal process outsourcing referred to the complete outsourcing of a routine internal legal process to an external service provider (just like business process outsourcing). Today, the terms are used somewhat interchangeably.