The past decade and a half has seen an enormous change in the evolution of alternative legal services providers. In today’s marketplace, they play an ever-increasing role in how large corporate law departments deliver legal services to their entities. While these companies can and do provide services across all legal disciplines, one of the earliest and still most ubiquitous tasks is the management and review of documents in large, complex litigations and investigations.

Companies usually say that they utilize an outside provider for their document reviews for two reasons. First, they believe that relying on the services of a provider that does managed review as a core business line makes the process more efficient. Second, partially as a result of this efficiency and partially as a result of the lower cost structure of an ALSP, companies believe they will save money. Both expectations bear out in practice.