Legal process outsourcing pioneer Elevate has partnered with tech companies, including Dolby, Juniper Networks, and NetApp, to review and modernize processes within the legal function. For example, Elevate found that senior-level Juniper attorneys were reviewing 600 Gifts Travel & Entertainment requests and over 600 Marketing Development Funds per quarter. Elevate helped reduce costs by one-third by creating a new structure where only high-risk matters are escalated for review. Kunoor Chopra, Elevate's vice president legal services and co-founder, discussed the company's model and the market reaction to Elevate from clients with The Recorder after being named the LPO of the year as part of the California Leaders in Tech Law and Innovation Awards.

The Recorder: How do you describe Elevate's value to a potential client who has never used your services before in 75 words or less?

Kunoor Chopra: Elevate has been a leader of legal innovation since its inception, and helped define what was once known as the 'LPO' sector from the early 2000s when our management team founded LawScribe and Integreon. Today, we set the standard for what it means to be a Law Company, offering a broad suite of solutions combining people, technology, process and data empowering law departments and law firms to modernize the practice and business of law.

Who is your target customer? How satisfied are you with market awareness of you and your services within that audience?

As "The Law Company" (a market segment our management team founded, defined, and developed), Elevate provides Fortune 500 legal departments and top-tier law firms with a broad range of technology-enabled services, consulting, and technology point solutions that help to increase efficiencies, improve outcomes, and lower legal costs. Our services offering is the most extensive in the legal industry, making it a "one-stop" provider for organizations seeking a coordinated blend of strategic consulting, operational excellence, legal technology, and managed legal services. Through working with Elevate, our customers gain insights into the latest global best practices of similarly situated legal departments around the world and avoid the pitfalls we have observed and experienced.

Since many of our founders had built prior companies and had solid reputations in the legal vertical, Elevate received market attention almost from its inception. There was some confusion in the market, however, around the areas we supported due to our broad portfolio of offerings. In the last couple of years, we have definitely solidified our reputation as a top law company provider due to the quality of support we have provided our customers. In fact, the 2017 CLOC State of the Industry Survey mentioned Elevate as the most used alternative service provider. As we mature, the market is also gaining a better understanding of our full suite of offerings, although, since many customers are buying only one area of support, they may not appreciate the full complement of services we offer. We are definitely working on creating better awareness there.

What has the market come to trust an alternative legal service provider like you to handle? What tasks will take some more convincing?

Elevate helps our customers:

•  identify opportunities for service improvement and enhancement, as well as financial and operational efficiencies, through the optimized leverage of resources, expertise, tools, and process in business and legal services such as litigation, contracts, M&A, compliance, and IP;
• identify and prioritize key transformation areas through the use of legal technologies or increased legal shared services;
• enhance service delivery and operating processes by adopting a world-class operating and coverage model, legal operations services, business intelligence systems, and increased focus on managing by metrics;
• optimize spend with law firms via best-in-class cost containment and financial management tools and techniques; and
• implement strategic service improvement, modernization, and transformation, leveraging new technology where appropriate, in a manner that is pragmatic, realistic and achievable (in particular, whether any technologies offer opportunities to integrate teams horizontally).

What will take more convincing is to get the law firms and certain industries to allow law companies to seamlessly, through their law firm affiliations, provide end-to-end practice of law and legal support. For instance, through our affiliation with a law firm, ElevateNext, Elevate has the capability to provide full litigation and transactional support, including the practice of law, often on a fixed fee or other alternative fee structures.

Although we support both corporate legal departments and law firms, some law firms are resistant to leverage what we can offer for the greater good (to service their corporate clients). The relationship works best when we partner with our customers to enhance the services they provide to their clients by introducing new efficiencies, augmenting their team through flexible resourcing and strategically implementing the latest technologies so they can focus on higher-value work.

With respect to service areas, there are certain industries that are comfortable with obtaining support globally, and others such as Pharma and Healthcare who are more comfortable with onshore support. They can benefit significantly from leveraging global support options.