Unlocking Cost Savings & Efficiency Through Alternative Legal Services

Where legal teams are cutting outside counsel spend right now, with real cost comparisons across M&A, corporate, litigation, and IP.

You've been asked to cut outside counsel spend without cutting quality. The issue isn't the bet-the-company work. It's that routine work is priced the same way: subpoena responses, NDA and MSA review, a six-week tariffs question that gets a partner-level secondee. All of it flows to the same panel firms at the same rates.

57% of law departments already work directly with ALSPs, most alongside their firms rather than instead of them. The question is no longer whether to unbundle — it's what to unbundle first.

In this short guide, you'll find the four highest-impact ways legal departments are using alternative legal services, built from Priori's direct experience staffing enterprise legal teams and findings from the Thomson Reuters ALSP 2025 report. Use cases, real examples, and a rate comparison you can take into a budget conversation.

What You'll Get

• What flexible talent actually costs vs. Am Law partner rates — practice area by practice area, benchmarked against Am Law 1–50 and 51–100
• Which four categories of work move first and what teams saved moving them, including subpoena response at roughly 40–60% of law firm cost
• Where the 30%+ savings comes from and the engagement structure that unlocks it