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.

Question Title

* 1. What type of organization do you work for?

Question Title

* 2. How large is your internal legal department, including lawyers, non-lawyer professionals, and support personnel?

Question Title

* 3. Before taking this survey, how familiar were you with the concept of aggregated outsourcing of a given kind of work to a single legal service provider (whether referred to as managed services or legal process outsourcing - LPO)?

  Not at All Somewhat Familiar Very Extremely
How Familiar?

Question Title

* 4. If so, do you think of and refer to aggregated outsourcing of a given kind of work to a single legal service provider as being managed services or as being legal process outsourcing?

Question Title

* 5. Which of the following types of legal ancillary and support work would you consider candidates for aggregated outsourcing to a non-law firm service provider (whether referred to as managed services or legal process outsourcing)? Check all that apply:

Question Title

* 6. How are your organization’s needs for non-eDiscovery ancillary and support services changing?

Question Title

* 7. When using outside providers for non-eDiscovery ancillary and support services, how often do you rely on your outside law firms?

Question Title

* 8. Please indicate the non-eDiscovery ancillary and support services, if any, that you currently obtain from non-law firm providers. Check all that apply:

Question Title

* 9. When using non-law firm providers for non-eDiscovery ancillary and support services, on what basis do you generally acquire them?

Question Title

* 10. What do you think is the primary reason your organization acquires such services on the basis it currently does?

Question Title

* 11. Do you think your organization might be interested in changing the basis on which it acquires any of its legal ancillary and support services?

Question Title

* 12. If your organization were to try aggregated outsourcing to a non-law firm service provider, which ancillary and support service(s) do you think would interest your organization? Check all that apply:

Question Title

* 13. Would you be interested in having one of our experts contact you to discuss any questions you may have or to see how we might be able to assist you?

T