Can legal service outsourcing get adopted beyond document review?

Jul 1, 2017 1:00 AM CDT

On-demand lawyering is our future: What will it look like?

Recently, I saw a TV ad recruiting Uber drivers. It showed a young guy, apparently a family man, seamlessly moving back and forth from earning money driving to “chilling.” Whatever you think about ride-booking services in general, or Uber in specific, it certainly made driving for Uber seem like an…

Jun 1, 2017 2:00 AM CDT

How managed services are building systems for corporate legal work

Legal managed services providers design, build and staff process-driven systems that efficiently complete legal work. The work’s content often is sophisticated and important to the client’s long-term commercial interests. Yet the volume is too large to be performed cost-effectively by law firm associates and too narrow and repetitive to warrant hiring more in-house lawyers.

Jun 1, 2017 12:10 AM CDT

Building a better law firm takes tech collaborators

More and more often, the answers are that entities that are not law firms can perform tasks at a higher level of quality, at a significantly lower price and faster than any law firm. Better. Cheaper. Faster. Is there something not to like?

May 1, 2017 1:30 AM CDT

Legal staffing company acquires competitor from accounting firm

A Chicago legal staffing firm has acquired an accounting firm’s contract attorney business. On Wednesday, Crain’s reported that Legalpeople has bought ProjecTemps, a Chicago-based contract attorney company owned by accounting firm Plante Moran. Terms of the deal were not announced, but according to Crain’s, the acquisition of ProjectTemps will add…

Mar 23, 2017 11:30 AM CDT

Seyfarth signs licensing deal with ‘software robots’ company to automate mundane tasks

Seyfarth Shaw says it will be the first major law firm to use “software robots” that use human training to move information between computer programs or apps. Seyfarth is licensing the technology for so-called robotic process information from Blue Prism, the American Lawyer (sub. req.) reports. A press release announcing…

Feb 8, 2017 9:40 AM CST

Study finds law firms and corporations increasingly turning to alternative legal service providers

A majority of law firms and corporations are already using alternative legal service providers (ALSP) in at least one service category, and more intend to do so in the coming year. That was the main finding in a study released Tuesday by the Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute, in partnership…

Jan 31, 2017 2:00 PM CST

UnitedLex partners with law schools to give new grads work experience

The concept of a residency program for law school grads is far from new, but one legal services provider is turning concept into reality. UnitedLex—a legal services outsourcing firm with 22 centers of operation worldwide, including North America, the United Kingdom, Israel and India—is supporting a legal residency program at…

Feb 1, 2016 1:10 AM CST

Outsourcing company will open office in law school library

Suffolk University Law School has found a use for some unused space in its law library. Legal outsourcing company Integreon will create an office there and pay students to work on projects such as due-diligence, e-discovery and document review, contract review and legal spending analytics, according to a story by…

Jan 27, 2016 6:15 AM CST

Lawyer who reviewed 13,000 documents in two months isn’t entitled to overtime pay, judge rules

A lawyer doing document review work for Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan isn’t entitled to overtime pay because he was using legal judgment, a federal judge has ruled. U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams of Manhattan ruled on Dec. 30 in the case of William Henig, the New York Law Journal…

Jan 4, 2016 8:06 AM CST

Thomson Reuters opens new US legal outsourcing office

Thomson Reuters is opening a third legal outsourcing office in the United States. The new Thomson Reuters Legal Managed Services office is located in Eagan, Minnesota, the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal reports. It is staffed with four full-time lawyers, but the number of lawyers swells to 60 when contract…

Oct 21, 2015 6:48 AM CDT

Roundtable on change and challenge in the business of law

At a rather small table in a large hotel conference room, five pioneers in new legal services met with the ABA Journal in May. Someone suggested the Las Vegas gathering looked like a poker game, but the intention was a discussion of a very different kind of gambling—the risks they've…

Sep 1, 2015 6:10 AM CDT

Learn how to balance efficiency with your level of service—or miss opportunities

The field of operations management is focused on creating efficient and effective business operations. It recognizes that there are trade-offs that must be made between efficiency and service level (or other similar metrics) in any organization’s business and operations strategy. Companies, as a general rule, cannot be both highly efficient…

Aug 12, 2015 8:59 AM CDT

Outsourcing company opens Austin office, part of onshoring trend

Legal outsourcing company Integreon has opened an office in Austin, Texas, providing more evidence that law firms and companies are increasingly sending their outsourced work to offices in the United States rather than overseas. The Austin office could employ as many as 300 people in the next few years, Corporate…

Jul 29, 2015 10:47 AM CDT

Document review arguably ‘devoid of legal judgment,’ 2nd Circuit says, allowing wage suit to proceed

A trial judge erred in dismissing a BigLaw document reviewer’s lawsuit seeking overtime pay, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. Accepting plaintiff David Lola’s allegations as true for the purpose of deciding a motion to dismiss, the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said his claim that his…

Jul 23, 2015 12:45 PM CDT