David Klein Vice President and General Counsel of Quislex, in their New York office. September 25, 2019.

The attitudes of outsourcing legal work have changed since QuisLex ­general counsel David Klein worked in firms. Now, law firms have a better understanding of the place companies like QuisLex play in the corporate world. Aside from his role as the sole in-house attorney at QuisLex, he also helps the company close corporate deals. Klein spoke to Corporate Counsel about his dual role at QuisLex, the evolution of outsourcing legal services, the future of QuisLex and the place outsourcing legal has in the corporate world.

What is involved in your role as GC of QuisLex? A lot of my responsibility at QuisLex involves negotiating the company's contracts, as well as keeping up changes in the law and in particular data privacy law. Two years ago it was the [General Data Protection Regulation] and most recently the [California Consumer Privacy Act] coming online in California. Because of my background, I wear two hats here, which includes helping sell and close corporate matters because I've got such familiarity with corporate transactions. My background is right to make it easier for me and the company to connect with in-house legal counsel and law firm partners.

How has QuisLex's business model changed since it started? In a lot of respects, the business has changed. In the early days, it was a lot about document review and government investigations. Over the last five to 10 years a lot of that work has shifted into corporate work in terms of drafting and negotiating contracts, compliance, legal operations, mergers and acquisitions and most recently data privacy.

Where do you see the company going in the next five to 10 years? I think there is going to be an emphasis on growing some new and more complex work. What's happening is companies are beginning to outsource more complex agreements and more complex transactions. The same thing is happening even on the litigation side where we're being asked to manage elements of litigation- or investigation-related work. I think we are moving up the food chain and as we move up the food chain the issues will become more complicated. The real change I think is a morphing of what we do into additional services like privacy-related services. They're similar to document review in that they often involve reviewing large numbers of documents, but they often require a different skill set and a different understanding of the law.

Have attitudes toward outsourcing changed since you started at QuisLex?

I think what's happened is that there is acceptance of outsourcing on a much wider scale. When companies like ours started doing document review, there was a lot of pushback in the industry primarily from law firms who maybe felt threatened by our business model. It's been long since the acceptance of our services were achieved in that space. I think what we're seeing now is much more widespread acceptance of the fact that legal outsourcing is going to be a growing part of the corporate world in the coming years.