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Here's one takeaway from this week's New York forum on the business of law to keep traditional law firm leaders up at night: Alternative legal services providers have only just begun to chomp gleefully into the firms' existing market share.

“The people who will drive the change are just getting started. So far, they have only tinkered around the edges,” said Richard Punt, CEO of Peerpoint, an Allen & Overy subsidiary that places contract lawyers.

But law firms are far from powerless, Punt and others suggested, and some may even end up finding success in partnership with their nontraditional rivals. “We are beginning to see the pace of change accelerate,” Punt said.

Punt spoke at panel discussion about the future of the legal services industry on Wednesday during the legal business forum, which was held during ALM's Legalweek 2018 conference.

“In an insanely fragmented market, the law firms have a massive opportunity. The constraint is only their own ambitions,” Punt said. “There will be more integration” in the industry, Punt predicted, driven by clients' preference for having to deal with only one outside provider.

“Clients love having one person who is responsible; they love one throat to choke,” he said.

Panelist Al Giles, the global head of the commercial department for Axiom, a 2,000-employee legal staffing company, echoed the idea that ventures like his could join with traditional law firms and find new ways to work together for common clients. “It's up to us how we divide that for the client,” Giles said. “It's an opportunity for law firms. I don't think it is a sort of doomsday scenario.”

Morgan, Lewis & Bockius chairwoman Jami Wintz McKeon, another panelist, wasn't ready to concede all sorts of work to lower-cost alternative providers—or necessarily join forces. “There are some law firms who have skinnied down and chase only the highest rate work,” she said. But not Morgan Lewis.

“For us, it's relationship-driven. We do wide and deep,” she said.

Also on the panel was Patrick Lamb, the founder and owner of Valorem Law, a company that was among the first to provide alternative fee consulting in the legal services industry. As the session came to an end, Lamb underlined what he views as the most ominous threat for all other deliverers of legal services: The Big Four accounting firms. “If the Big Four decided tomorrow they wanted to own the space, we wouldn't be having this conference next year,” he concluded.