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 legal tasks to finish by the end of the quarter. They have to establish the business’s IP rights, secure liability insurance, and verify 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 that can provide the litigation support you need when you need it and without breaking the bank. Enter Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs).
Discover Paragon: Flexible, top-tier legal talent for your evolving business needs.
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:
By the end, you’ll understand how ALSPs can help you boost efficiency, access legal resources, and lower costs.
ALSP is a broad term that refers to any organization providing legal services that isn’t a law firm.
Outside counsel was the norm in the legal industry for a long time, but demand for ALSPs grew over the last 10 years as cost reduction became more critical to in-house teams. A Reuters 2025 report shows that the ALSP market has an estimated size of $28.5 billion, with an annual growth rate of 18% from 2021 to 2023.
Alternative legal service providers (ALSPs) come in several forms, each offering different types of support to legal departments based on their needs, budgets, and preferred working styles.
Flexible legal talent providers pair 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’s license. These companies typically provide temporary paralegals, legal secretaries, and attorneys.
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.
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 a diverse range of 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 in 2021.
The use of Alternative Legal Service Providers among law firms is steadily increasing, as more firms recognize the value these providers bring in terms of efficiency, flexibility, and specialized expertise. According to the Reuters 2025 report, approximately 35% of law firms currently use independent ALSPs to deliver work to clients. Of those firms, 40% expect to increase their use in the next year, while only 1% expect a decrease.
Larger firms, in particular, are more likely to integrate ALSPs into their delivery models, often relying on them for support with eDiscovery, compliance, and other high-volume or cost-sensitive work. At the same time, 21% of law firm respondents acknowledge that ALSPs are challenging the traditional business model, a signal that these providers are reshaping how legal services are delivered.
Firms with affiliate ALSPs are even more likely to engage with independents, demonstrating that experience with alternative service models tends to increase adoption. In fact, 62% of firms with affiliates also use independent ALSPs, compared with 23% of firms without affiliates.
This layered use of ALSPs suggests that law firms are experimenting with alternative delivery models and incorporating them as an integral part of their strategy. The trend indicates continued growth, as firms increase their reliance on ALSPs to remain competitive in an evolving legal market and to meet client expectations for innovation, efficiency, and value.
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.
ALSPs’ flexibility helps in-house teams avoid wasteful legal spend. 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 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.
For more cost breakdowns like this one, check out our GC’s Guide to Rightsourcing.
Flexible legal talent providers, like Paragon, have networks of attorneys with diverse backgrounds in various 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, specializing in compliance, and spent nine months handling regulatory investigations for a social media tech company.
Law firms are often slow to learn and adopt new technologies. They’re worried that these tools create security risks, and they can’t bill their clients for learning how to use the latest software. Meanwhile, ALSPs typically create and use innovative legal tech to work more efficiently and precisely than competitors.
This software encompasses a range of solutions, from document management systems to contract lifecycle management tools and AI-powered legal research and analytics platforms. For example, Paragon recently partnered 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 continue to enhance their ability to handle legal workflows.
To better understand the value of ALSPs, let’s examine how several companies relied on Paragon as their flexible legal talent provider.
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 client accessed Paragon’s talent at a combined hourly rate of $605, compared to a law firm completing the same work at an estimated pricing of $2,000 per hour. The switch to interim counsel saved the business over $2.3 million in one year.
A Fortune 500 biotech company needed to build a comprehensive global privacy program — but traditional outside counsel proved too costly and disconnected from day-to-day operations. The client sought flexible, high-caliber legal talent who could embed within the business, support internal teams, manage processes, and provide ongoing guidance on both US and European privacy compliance.
Paragon delivered an experienced privacy leader with over ten years of in-house experience. The consultant quickly integrated into the team, led the development of the privacy program, advised multiple departments, and supported GDPR compliance efforts in the UK. The client then transitioned the consultant to an ad hoc role, retaining institutional knowledge while scaling support as needed.
Results:
By partnering with Paragon, the client gained an adaptable, business-aligned legal solution, demonstrating how in-house teams use ALSPs to drive results without overextending budgets.
A leading FinTech lender aimed to build a best-in-class procurement legal team, but faced an average six — nine month timeline to secure qualified full-time hires. The company needed attorneys with experience in financial services, knowledge of data privacy, and the ability to hit the ground running without relying on templates. With a growing backlog of commercial procurement work, a short-term, high-impact solution was essential.
Paragon deployed a three-person team: led by a seasoned procurement lawyer with FinTech expertise, supported by two procurement professionals skilled in vendor and data privacy agreements. This structure gave the client immediate relief from overflow work, allowing them to buy critical time to hire strategically. As permanent hires were made, Paragon’s flexible support was gradually scaled down. Ultimately, the client converted the Paragon team lead to a full-time role.
Results:
Paragon’s tailored team model delivered immediate value, long-term results, and a cost-effective bridge to permanent hires.
A prime example of ALSPs delivering high value is during periods of increased demand or staffing gaps. One leading tech company turned to Paragon during a year-end sales surge while key legal team members were on leave.
Instead of hiring permanently or leaning on expensive outside counsel, they engaged a seasoned commercial contracts attorney who quickly integrated with the in-house team, helped manage high-volume agreements, and optimized workflows. The short-term engagement closed critical sales and preserved budget flexibility — and the company has since re-engaged Paragon for repeat scenarios.
Here are common situations where ALSPs make the most strategic sense:
ALSPs offer flexible, cost-efficient solutions that align legal support with shifting business needs — especially when agility and scale matter most.
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 law departments reduce costs, work more efficiently, and maintain stakeholder satisfaction.
If you’re considering leveraging ALSPs, Paragon Legal can help. Our extensive network of experienced attorneys offers tailored interim counsel solutions to legal departments.
Contact us today to learn how we can help you rightsource your way to legal department success.
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