IHLS attends the Legal Leaders Europe Conference

(Brian Noon, Co-Founder and Director of In-House Legal Solutions – left)

In September 2023, Brian Noon, Co-founder and Director of In-House Legal Solutions, attended the Legal Leaders Europe Conference held by Reuters Events in London. This conference was designed for the leaders of Europe’s General Counsel (GC) community and delivered by experts at the top of their profession. It aimed to equip attendees with practical takeaways and readily implementable solutions covering global regulatory compliance, risk mitigation and cost control.

Many discussions were held over the course of the two days, and Brian had the pleasure of being the panel moderator for a discussion regarding ‘The rise of Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs): accelerated growth and expanded service categories’, alongside participants from Flex Legal, MV Credit and LexSolutions. It is clear that the alternative legal service sector is growing rapidly, and Brian noted that there were some great takeaways from the panel discussion including:

• ALSPs’ tendency to be nimble and entrepreneurial enables them to adapt and execute new ideas and models with ease.
• Whilst tech can be of assistance, it is the entrepreneurial culture of ALSPs which results in innovation in services and solutions.
• Budgets and headcounts are ever present issues for GCs, and so ALSPs offer a welcome, cost-effective solution to increasing the resources GC have available to manage their legal work.
• Consolidation of the market is likely in the future, especially with the involvement of the Big4 in the ALSP market. However, such consolidation by bigger players would arguably weaken the effectiveness of the ALSPs they acquire by reducing their ability to be nimble and execute ideas.

There was thoughtful discussion from the audience members including around balancing the benefit of the cost of outsourcing work to ALSPs as opposed to increasing internal resource, and on the importance of the outsourced team being completely aligned with the direction and mindset of the in-house team – two factors that In-House Legal Solutions’ model specifically balances successfully for many of its client base.

If you would like to reach out to understand ways that In-House Legal Solutions can help optimise your legal team and manage your legal workload, then feel free to get in contact via letstalk@inhouselegalsolutions.com.