In an increasingly complex legal ecosystem, corporate legal departments are still trying to determine which work belongs in-house, with a law firm or in the hands of an alternative legal service provider (ALSP). Wednesday's Legal Decoder "ALSPs and Business of Law" webinar argued that the final analysis seldom revolves around budgets or cash.

"Money was the last topic that came up. It was providing value. What's the client relationship? Can we connect with them? Are they driving efficiencies for us? How does it make our life easier? How do we remove some of the issues and challenges we've seen previously?" said panelist Daniel Young, manager, legal ops at Boston Scientific.

To be sure, while the corporate legal insourcing trend may already be straining under the weight of increasing workloads and only modest head count growth, stakeholders may still be prone to evaluating what they can accomplish in-house before pushing work out to an external provider.