In-house counsel are increasingly turning to smaller law firms when they need outside counsel to handle litigation related to intellectual property.

A new study from the legal analytics company Lex Machina shows there has been a decline in the amount of IP defense work handled by Am Law 100 firms in recent years. Non-Am Law 100 firms, meanwhile, have seen a corresponding increase in the percentage of cases they handle, the study found.

“I suspect a lot of companies that used to go with the big firms discovered that reliance on the bigger firms, with their high rates and scorched-earth policies, became unsustainable,” said Brian Howard, Lex Machina's legal data scientist and director of analytics services.