Deloitte took another giant step into alternative legal service provider country on Monday with the launch of its Legal Business Services practice in the U.S. The new initiative looks to build on the company's existing roster of legal department offerings with the inclusion of such disciplines as contract life cycle management, regulatory consulting, e-discovery and data governance.

To be sure, the Big Four company has been steadily encroaching on the legal world for some time, especially when it comes to technology. Case in point: Deloitte kicked off Legal Ventures, an initiative that traded the organization's expertise in exchange for access to legal tech startups' products and services, last December.

But the launch of the legal business services practice also makes clear that Deloitte is investing just as heavily in the talent or skill sets that have traditionally populated ALSPs and tech companies.

"We anticipate becoming the undisputed market leader in legal business services and to achieve that we're strategically in [search of] leading talent from that world of alternative legal service providers. Chief legal officers, legal operations, legal industry eminence, legal technology," said Mark Ross, a principal with Deloitte Tax LLP.

Ross himself was executive vice president and global head of contracts at Integreon before joining Deloitte in January. Similarly, Deloitte Tax's managing director, Lewis Christian, was the managing director of U.S. contracts consulting at Elevate before crossing over in June. And it's not just the tax business that's seen an influx of ALSP blood. Last May, Deloitte Legal found a new lead partner in former Luminance Technologies CEO Emily Foges.

So why all of the interest in ALSP or legal tech veterans? It could have something to do with Deloitte's ongoing mission to become the "singular destination" in what Ross identified as the multibillion-dollar legal services market. An area such as contract life cycle management benefits from the use of technology solutions, but there's also a fair amount of experience-born strategy involved with knowing how and when to use those resources.

"Contract technology isn't on its own a magic wand that cures all of these ills," Ross said.

Meanwhile, the legal talent pool will likely continue to flow in the direction of the work. Nathan Cemenska, director of legal operations and industry insights at Wolters Kluwer's ELM Solutions, indicated that there's a sense of inevitability among some in the industry that a sizable portion of that business is going to end up with the Big Four, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy among would-be hires.

"I think once somebody goes to the Big Four, it might be hard to get them back," he said.

What this means for the other players in the legal industry remains to be seen. Cemenska doesn't expect to see ALSPs disappear from the landscape entirely. Instead, he postulated that large and financially stable companies will continue to operate despite the growing influence of the Big Four. "I think that there's always going to be room for niche players," he said.

In the meantime, Deloitte remains open to the possibility of continuing to grow its ranks. "We will continue to invest strategically in some of the leading specialists in the market today," Ross at Deloitte Tax said.