Alternative legal service providers (ALSPs) still have a long road to becoming a corporate legal department's go-to resource for large-scale legal matters. However, observers said ALSPs can gain a bigger slice of corporations' work by improving their marketing and bolstering their partnerships with law firms.

Despite many ALSPs' main selling point being their effectiveness for document-heavy legal matters, they aren't securing a significant portion of corporate legal departments' large-scale legal matter spend. According to Wolters Kluwer's "The Effect of Very Large Legal Matters on Outside Legal Costs" report, data from the company's LegalView platform indicated roughly 2.2% of spend on "megamatters" went to ALSPs. Wolters Kluwer defined "megamatters" as very large matters that incur over $1 million in spend.

While that figure is low, Yvonne Nath, CEO and founder of ALSP Advisor, which assists law firms and ALSPs on working together for matters, noted that since ALSPs charge less, they may be getting more work than meets the eye.