At the dawn of 2020, leaders of corporate law departments have choices like never before. Gone are the days when they had one option to handle a legal matter that surpassed the capabilities of their in-house staff: dial up a law firm. The market abounds with new vendors—Axiom, UnitedLex, Elevate and plenty of less-prominent names—that promise new ways of handling legal work, and the Big Four accounting firms continue to eye legal services as an opportunity. With the rise of legal operations as a discipline, clients have turned to data to guide their efforts to slice and dice work between firms and alternative providers.

In spite of this cornucopia of options, the terrain remains surprisingly firm. According to a recent survey from Altman Weill, only 27.7% of chief legal officers anticipate trimming their outside legal spending in 2020. Of those who do, only 19.7% said that shifting work to non-law firm vendors would be part of their cost-cutting strategy. Compare that to the 57.6% of respondents who said they would keep more work in-house and the 50% who aimed to negotiate better rates.

Nonetheless, complacency isn't an option. In 2020, expect more and more law firms to advance along one of two paths: partnering with alternative providers, or enhancing their own internal capabilities to handle high-volume, low-margin work.

"That is going to be a necessity for firms that handle the type of work that is subject to more rate pressure," says Marcie Borgal Shunk, president and founder of the Tilt Institute, a law firm advisory. "Creating their own in-house groups to do that will make sense just as much as aligning with others to service that need."

Some clients that have already started dividing work among multiple levels of vendors have discovered that quality has suffered in the absence of one party that absorbs full responsibility. But that presents a new opportunity for law firms to serve as point person, rather than begging to take on all the work by themselves again.

"Clients want somebody to be accountable. Law firms can be the accountable party, then find somebody to do the job," says Greenberg Traurig shareholder Thomas Romer.

In 2019, Greenberg launched a subsidiary, Recurve, that aims to do just that, serving as an intermediary connecting clients, firms and alternate providers. Romer anticipates more collaboration between firms to handle issues including legal technology, pointing to the growing momentum behind Reynen Court, the platform financially backed by Clifford Chance and Latham & Watkins, among others.

When it comes to integrating technology and improving processes, the Big Four are already ahead of the curve. Although they are still barred from directly offering legal services in the United States, one sign of their continued appetite for growth is in their alliances with established firms. Take Deloitte's recent pairing with Epstein Becker Green on employment law as an example. Expect to see even more of these tie-ups, even as discussions of regulatory changes in several states could open the door even wider.

"They are pushing the envelope more in 2019 than they ever have," Shunk says.

Not every law firm faces the same degree of risk. "Some are very much in the way of the Big Four and some are at a different level," Winston & Strawn chief information officer David Cunningham says.

But even firms keeping the Big Four at arm's length would be wise to watch them carefully.

"The impact on us isn't so direct, but we're adapting anyway," Cunningham adds.