For years, the legal industry has been talking about the potential of alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) to change traditional aspects of billing and reset relationships between legal departments and their law firms. Today, that change is accelerating, as corporate counsel increasingly embrace AFAs.

A recent analysis of 2019 charges billed by outside counsel reveals that 12.1% of matters this past year were billed under some form of AFA. That is an increase from 9.2% in 2017, according to the LexisNexis CounselLink 2020 Enterprise Legal Management Trends Report, which features year-over-year legal industry trends related to billing rates and matter volume. The Trends Report insights are based on data derived from nearly $35 billion in legal spend based on almost 7 million invoices and more than 1.7 million matters.