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21 May 2019

What Brands Want in a Shifting Legal Services Landscape

As company needs continue to evolve, the role of outside legal counsel is changing. Budget models have shifted drastically over time, particularly since the 2008 recession; service providers are becoming more sophisticated; new players—including the Big 4 accounting firms, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, PwC, and KPMG—are entering the legal market; and companies are demanding more flexible, strategic, and business-oriented approaches to legal advice than that offered by the traditional models.

More recently, technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) have made the stakes even higher. On February 18, Ernst & Young announced that it will partner with Luminance, an AI platform founded in 2016 that “uses pattern recognition and machine learning algorithms to read legal documents, making contract review processes more efficient.” Such tools are helping external providers to provide cheaper, higher-quality work than previously possible.

All of the Big 4 are now in the legal business, many with larger legal teams than most law firms. They focus on practice areas as diverse as corporate; labor and employment; transactional; digital; merger and acquisitions; governance and compliance; and immigration. So what does all of this mean for intellectual property (IP) and brand lawyers?

Clearly, the game is changing across the board. But as IP and innovation increasingly form the bedrock of the global economy, IP specialists still have a critical role to play, if they are willing to adapt.

Change Is Here

The Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute, in partnership with the Georgetown Law Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession, Acritas, and the University of Oxford Saïd Business School , published a report earlier this year that cites the rapid growth of alternative legal service providers (ALSPs). The report, which was based on responses in 2018 from 517 decision makers representing 335 law firms and 182 corporations in Australia, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, finds that ALSPs are now broadly used for tasks traditionally done by law firms, including:

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