Paragon Legal, a woman-founded and women-led enterprise providing high-quality flexible legal talent to in-house legal teams, is thrilled to announce its selection by Mitratech’s AdvanceLaw to join its innovative data-driven outside counsel marketplace. This partnership signifies Paragon Legal’s continued commitment to delivering exceptional legal services and showcases its unique value proposition in the Alternative Legal Service Provider (ALSP) market.
Extensive Vetting Process and Unique Differentiators
Paragon Legal was chosen after a rigorous vetting process, which included comprehensive rounds of evaluations, client reference checks, and consultations with industry leaders and AdvanceLaw members. This extensive vetting highlighted Paragon Legal’s superior client service, commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB), and its innovative approach to flexible legal talent to support short and medium-term in-house team needs, including workload management, interim and gap support, project-based support, temp-to-perm, and specialized expertise.
“When we started this process, we didn’t anticipate the distinct differentiators that would emerge. Paragon Legal’s dedication to client outcomes, thoughtful growth, and technology adoption truly set them apart,” said Aaron Kotok, Executive Director at Mitratech’s AdvanceLaw. “We see a growing segment of client needs—secondments being an excellent example—that are a lose/lose value proposition for law firms and general counsel. Paragon Legal’s flexible talent solutions present a win-win scenario.”
Why AdvanceLaw Chose Paragon Legal
Client-Centric Philosophy: The vetting process revealed Paragon Legal’s focus on client service, diversity, and a “hungry” posture that prioritizes client outcomes while nurturing and developing deployed talent.
Impressive Client Impact Stats: Paragon Legal boasts an industry-leading Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 79, an average satisfaction rating of 9.2 out of 10 from clients, and 9.4 out of 10 from placed attorneys.
Experienced and Diverse Team: Over 90% of Paragon’s candidates have in-house experience, and more than 45% of the corporate and attorney team identify as people of color.
Strong Track Record and Quality: Client reference calls demonstrated a history of attentive service, experienced attorneys, and well-curated matches, supporting clients’ commercial and tech transactions, privacy, employment, product counseling, and niche regulatory needs.
Commitment to Talent Development: Paragon Legal invests in training and development for its deployed talent base and provides them with advanced AI tools and training to drive client efficiency and productivity.
Industry and Practice Area Focus: Paragon Legal aligns with AdvanceLaw’s secondment and resourcing demands in sectors such as technology, healthcare, biotech, manufacturing, and CPG, and practice areas such as commercial and technology transactions, privacy, and employment.
Impact and Commitment
“Paragon Legal is honored to begin supporting AdvanceLaw’s general counsel. After being evaluated versus other major providers in the flex legal talent space, we are proud to be selected and to showcase our unique differentiators,” said Trista Engel, CEO of Paragon Legal. “We are excited for this esteemed group of 350 GCs to see how our flexible talent solutions can enhance their team’s productivity and budget.”
About Paragon Legal
Paragon Legal provides legal departments at leading corporations with high quality, flexible legal talent to help them meet their changing workload demands. At the same time, we offer talented attorneys and other legal professionals a way to practice law outside the traditional career path, empowering them to achieve both their professional and personal goals. For more information about Paragon Legal and its services, please visit www.paragonlegal.com.
https://paragonlegal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/PL-press-release-image.png500900Kristen Poor/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/paragon-logo.svgKristen Poor2024-08-07 09:35:232024-08-07 09:35:24Paragon Legal Celebrates Exclusive Selection by AdvanceLaw for Innovative Legal Marketplace
Mitratech’s data-driven outside counsel marketplace announces its expansion into the alternative legal services market, growing its panel to 12,000+ lawyers across 22 providers.
Austin, TX (August 6, 2024) – In its 14th year, AdvanceLaw’s $100M legal marketplace helps General Counsel (GCs) select outside lawyers based on strong performance for peers, rather than using brand or high rates as a proxy for quality. The company continues its mission to suggest the best-qualified, best-value legal resources in 2024 by adding two alternative legal service providers (ALSPs) to its vetted panel: Paragon Legal and QuisLex.
“We see a growing segment of client needs — secondments being an excellent example — that are a lose/lose-value proposition for large law firms and general counsel, leaving both sides unhappy with the economics,” said Aaron Kotok, Executive Director at Mitratech’s AdvanceLaw.
Paragon Legal, a woman-founded and women-led enterprise, provides U.S.-based flexible staffing to support short and medium-term in-house talent needs created by overflow work, parental leaves, staff turnover, or company growth. Client engagements extend nationwide and across practice areas, including commercial contracting, privacy, employment, product counseling and niche regulatory support. Based in the Bay Area, Paragon has established a strong track record of success for leading clients, including several AdvanceLaw members. Its leadership’s laser focus on achieving stellar client outcomes was a key differentiator in the vetting process, supported by investments to drive efficiency and productivity for clients such as i) training and development support for Paragon’s deployed talent base and ii) providing AI tools and training to deployed talent.
“We are thrilled to begin supporting AdvanceLaw GCs. We work hard to ensure our clients receive top talent and 5-star service, and we are excited for this group of 350 GCs to see how flexible talent can enhance their team’s productivity and budget,” said Trista Engel, CEO, Paragon Legal.
QuisLex, a certified Minority Business Enterprise and AdvanceLaw’s other new ALSP addition, has provided managed legal services to GCs for 20+ years. The company’s ability to create top-quality solutions that pair innovative technologies (including generative AI) with the company’s 1000-strong stable of lawyers and rigorous quality control allows QuisLex to support clients outside the traditional litigation and M&A document review space, designing creative solutions for a growing range of legal and compliance use cases.
“AdvanceLaw’s peer performance evaluation model is an ideal way to introduce new GCs to what ASLPs can deliver, since there is uneven adoption across legal teams and very significant value to be created. We are excited for GCs to begin hearing from their peers about the results they have achieved with our team!” said Sirisha Gummaregula, COO at QuisLex.
Both Paragon and QuisLex were subject to rigorous vetting and client reference checks throughout the selection process. “Many in-house counsel are new to ALSPs and find it hard to navigate between providers. Our vetting surfaced important differentiators we think clients will really value, and we are excited to share those with our GC community,”” said Owen Bevan, AdvanceLaw’s Managing Director.
Paragon Legal and QuisLex’s new capabilities complement captive offerings at several current AdvanceLaw firms. Pinsent Masons’ Vario team provides flexible staffing services in the UK, Ireland, Netherlands, Germany, UAE, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Africa, in addition to managed services that include outsourced company secretarial support. McCarthy Tetrault’s MT > Align model provides flexible staffing services in Canada, alongside managed services in corporate, litigation, and immigration.
“Having vetted ALSPs be accountable to peer GCs for their performance will give our clients even more confidence to create bold change,” said Katherine Shell, VP of AdvanceLaw’s outside counsel transformation consulting team.
Paragon Legal and QuisLex join AdvanceLaw’s global panel of 20 leading law firms across the United States, Canada, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Collectively, AdvanceLaw panel members employ over 12,000 attorneys. To learn more about the AdvanceLaw panel providers please visit our website at https://www.advancelaw.com/firms/. To learn more about becoming an AdvanceLaw member legal department, please get in touch at info@advancelaw.com.
About Mitratech
Mitratech is a proven global technology partner for corporate legal, risk, compliance, and HR professionals seeking to maximize productivity, control expense, and mitigate risk by deepening organizational alignment, increasing visibility, and spurring collaboration across an enterprise. Mitratech serves over 20,000 organizations worldwide, spanning more than 160 countries.
https://paragonlegal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/shutterstock_2489828181.jpg5621000Kristen Poor/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/paragon-logo.svgKristen Poor2024-08-06 11:07:302024-08-06 11:07:31Mitratech AdvanceLaw Expands Legal Marketplace With New Alternative Legal Service Providers Paragon Legal and QuisLex
Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs) offer flexible, cost-effective legal support for in-house teams.
Key benefits of using ALSPs include scalability, cost savings, access to specialized expertise, and innovative legal tech—without the overhead of full-time hires or typical law firm rates.
Flexible legal talent providers, legal process outsourcing providers, and the Big Four accounting firms are the three main types of ALSPs.
Picture this: Your company has an upcoming product launch, and your in-house attorneys are swamped with tasks to finish by the end of the quarter. They have to establish the business’s IP rights, secure liability insurance, and check the product’s safety, among other responsibilities.
Outside counsel could help ease the workload, but firm attorneys typically require a lot of oversight and work slowly because they’re especially risk-averse. Their high fees also significantly cut into the company’s revenue.
Sound familiar? If you’re a GC or legal operations leader, you’ve likely been in similar situations more times than you care to admit. You’re not alone in feeling frustrated with the traditional law firm model.
Now, imagine another solution—one that could provide the expertise you need when you need it and without breaking the bank.
Enter Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs). In this post, we’ll demystify the term and show you how ALSPs can be a game-changer for your in-house team. We’ll cover:
The key differences between ALSPs and law firms
4 strategic benefits of partnering with an ALSP
Real-world case studies of in-house teams achieving success with ALSPs
By the end, you’ll clearly understand how ALSPs can help you boost efficiency, access specialized expertise, and lower costs.
What is an Alternative Legal Service Provider?
ALSP is a broad term that refers to any organization providing legal services that isn’t a law firm.
Outside counsel was the legal industry norm for a long time, but demand for ALSPs grew over the last 10 years as cost reduction became more critical to in-house teams. Reuters’ 2023 report shows that the ALSP market has grown by 145% since 2015, and its 2021 survey found that 71% of corporate law departments rely on ALSPs.
What are the most common types of ALSPs?
1. Flexible legal talent providers
Flexible legal talent providerspair temporary legal professionals with corporate legal departments. Organizations like Paragon exclusively offer interim attorneys with years of in-house experience in specialized practice areas, ensuring they can handle complex tasks that require expertise and judgment. They work closely with in-house counsel—participating in meetings, collaborating on projects, and contributing to strategic decision-making.
Other flexible talent providers focus on staffing for repetitive, high-volume work that doesn’t necessarily require an attorney license. These companies typically provide temporary paralegals and legal secretaries along with attorneys.
2. Legal process outsourcing providers (LPOs)
LPOs handle repetitive tasks that require minimal expertise—such as document review, data entry, and basic contract management.
These providers often rely on overseas talent and automation to minimize costs, and they typically work independently with limited direct collaboration with the client’s legal department. This talent solution is best for teams that need support for repetitive legal work at a low cost and don’t need to work closely with the service provider.
3. The Big Four accounting firms
The Big Four accounting firms (PwC, KPMG, EY, and Deloitte) offer routine legal services that complement their primary accounting work.
These ALSPs attract clients with their multi-purpose offerings. Because their staff includes a variety of business professionals—not just attorneys—these firms can offer diverse service bundles. However, the Big Four was the slowest-growing ALSP segment in Reuters’ 2023 report, making up just $1.5B of the $20B ALSP market.
4 Strategic Benefits of Using an ALSP
1. Scalability and Flexibility
Unlike hiring full-time attorneys, ALSPs let you scale your resources up or down based on your legal needs.
Imagine your legal department only needs 20 weekly hours from an attorney to help with sales negotiations over the next quarter. Instead of bringing on a full-time, permanent employee, you could hire an interim attorney for just that time. You can add or cut hours from your interim attorney based on how your team’s workload changes.
With this scalability, your in-house team can remain nimble when the economy, your business, or your budget unexpectedly shifts.
2. Cost Savings
ALSPs’ flexibility helps in-house teams avoid wasteful spending. Instead of relying on costly full-time attorneys or outside counsel for every task, you can use ALSPs to complete most of your in-house work at a more cost-effective rate (without compromising on quality).
Imagine you’re a part of a small in-house team for a company that’s about to go through a merger. Your full-time attorneys will need to dedicate significant time to this project over the next year, so you use an ALSP like Paragon to backfill the team’s day-to-day legal work.
Here’s a breakdown of how much the ALSP route would save your team over a year based on current rates—roughly $150,000 compared to a full-time hire and $350,000 compared to using outside counsel.
Flexible legal talent providers, like Paragon, have networks of attorneys with diverse backgrounds in many practice areas. Unlike outside counsel, interim attorneys from these providers work directly with your team at the pace your business needs. You can tap into niche legal expertise that may not be available in-house without resorting to costly law firms or new hires.
Say you need help with a regulatory compliance issue. A flexible legal talent provider can connect you with a seasoned expert in that field, like Paragon’s interim attorney Danny J.
He has over ten years of experience, specializes in compliance, and just spent nine months handling regulatory investigations for a social media tech company.
4. Access to innovative legal tech
Law firms are often slow to learn and adopt new technologies. They’re worried about these tools’ creating security risks, and they can’t bill their clients for learning how to use the latest software.
Meanwhile, ALSPs typically create and/or use innovative legal tech to work more efficiently and precisely than competitors. This software ranges from document management systems to contract lifecycle management tools and AI-powered legal research and analytics platforms.
Paragon, for example, recently formed a partnership with Screens.ai, an artificial intelligence-based contract review software for legal teams. Looking ahead, we expect more in-house teams to use tech platforms as AI tools become better at handling legal workflows.
How In-House Teams are Using ALSPs: 3 Case Studies
To better understand ALSPs’ value, let’s dive into how several companies relied on Paragon as their flexible legal talent provider.
1. Expanding a Medical Device Company’s Legal Team
Before engaging Paragon, a fast-growing medical devices company faced several major legal challenges. Paragon’s interim attorneys were able to resolve each problem promptly.
The business’ in-house global clinical trials attorney was drowning in negotiation work and needed support. Paragon deployed a corporate attorney with 20+ years of experience in clinical trials.
The medical business’ commercial contracts team didn’t have an effective process for handling its increasing number of procurement contracts. Paragon deployed an experienced contracts attorney who optimized the company’s CLM processes.
The medical business needed a privacy law expert. Paragon deployed an attorney with a background in healthcare compliance to ensure the company’s medical devices complied with US and EU regulations.
The client accessed Paragon’s talent at a combined hourly rate of $605, compared to a law firm completing the same work at an estimated $2,000 per hour. Altogether, the switch to interim counsel saved the business over $2.3 million in one year.
2. Conquering Overflow Work for a Software Giant
A Fortune 500 software company faced unpredictable spikes in legal work due to rapid growth, new product launches, and regulatory changes. They needed highly skilled, flexible help to address overflow work in commercial transactions, procurement, antitrust, privacy, and marketing.
Paragon provided the business with experienced interim counsel who handled a variety of tasks, including:
Outbound commercial transactions
Contract review and negotiation
Antitrust regulations
Privacy regulatory investigations
Product marketing campaigns
Procurement concerns
Adtech and marketing issues
These attorneys seamlessly integrated with the software company, impressing the legal team with their communication skills and ability to work autonomously.
The successful engagement led to an ongoing relationship, with the client engaging Paragon 20 times over the last four years and converting three interim attorneys to full-time employees.
3. Supporting a Cybersecurity Startup During Transitions
Synack, a Series D cybersecurity startup with a two-person legal team, faced a challenge when its corporate counsel went on maternity leave. Steve Soper, Synack’s Vice President of Legal, turned to Paragon for an interim counsel solution.
Paragon matched Synack with David, an experienced lawyer who quickly integrated with the team. David oversaw contract issues, provided legal support on employment and corporate matters, and ensured the team met their internal SLA for contract review response times. He worked twenty hours per week, billing only for the time engaged.
After David’s initial engagement ended, Steve reached out to Paragon to engage him for a second time on short notice. The company’s corporate counsel had just quit her role, so David’s prior experience and knowledge of Synack’s business were invaluable.
Synack eventually hired a new corporate counsel, but Steve noted he wouldn’t be surprised if he re-engages David or another Paragon attorney.
“Given his knowledge of the company, it’s just super-nice, from my perspective, to be able to say, ‘Hey David, can you come back for a couple weeks to look at some contracts?’” said Steve.
Manage your team’s overflow work with ALSPs
Whether you need to expand your team’s capacity, fill a temporary gap, or access niche expertise, ALSPs are worth considering as an alternative to outside counsel or full-time hiring. They help in-house departments reduce costs, work more efficiently, and keep stakeholders happy.
If you’re considering leveraging ALSPs, Paragon Legal can help. We provide legal departments with tailored interim counsel solutions using our extensive network of experienced attorneys.
Contact us today to learn how we can help you rightsource your way to legal department success.
https://paragonlegal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/shutterstock_1199129155.jpg6671000competenow/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/paragon-logo.svgcompetenow2024-07-23 10:43:272024-08-26 16:26:13Alternative Legal Service Providers: What are they and when to use them
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