An excellent law firm offers a wide range of legal services and has expertise in various professional fields, including quality advice, legal assistance, and litigation support. It can provide comprehensive knowledge of all aspects of cases rather than concentrating on a specific element. Consequently, law firms act as the one-stop shop for all legal concerns. However, there is no doubt that traditional legal services from law firms are considered high-cost, time-consuming, and sometimes rigid. 

ALSP (alternative legal service provider) is a company that provides legal services with a different set-up, structure, and approach compared to a more traditional law firm. ALSPs employ qualified lawyers but discard the traditional partnership set-up, which accords more agile and cost-efficient services, removes complexity, and improves the process during practice.

With the rapid growth of the market and dynamic demands scattered among customers, the biennial report of the ALSP sector done by Thomson Reuters illustrates that the lines between alternative legal service providers, law firms, corporate law departments, and even technology and software companies are rapidly blurring. 

DWF's Legal Operations team is the pioneer with 21 years of heritage in the ALSP business. It is also one of three divisions within DWF Group, Big Law's largest listed law firm. They have pivoted the paradigm as an ALSP to present value added services, which allows it to take even more client pain away and reduce the number of escalations and distractions for them.

"We possess the ability to provide both straightforward ALSP services and combine those with complex legal advice. No other ALSP with our scale and market reputation is part of the group with the law firm, and that combination is unique."

-Matthew Doughty, Chief Strategy and Growth Officer, DWF Mincrest

Mindcrest is the first company that created the category of ALSP in 2001 and now has grown into a giant ALSP with delivery centres in the UK, US and India. It is dedicated to providing intelligent strategies and legal services to its clients through its innovative approach. The company is specialized in contract management (including a fully managed end to end solution), e-discovery and litigation support, legal technology and operations consulting, and a wide range of consulting business advisory and technology products and services. 

No comparison with other ALSPs, this team are not bypassing the challenges by taking low-legal cases but keep on progressing to go beyond to achieve better. It constantly develops tech stack to best shore some of the work. Mr. Doughty explains, "The ability to invest in technology and tech-enabled solutions is the key as you look out in the future." The utilization of data provides insight for better decisions, integrating processes into its client's operation and creating long-term relationships and rapid deployment of resources to maximize efficiency and benefits. 

The Legal Operations team at DWF are sweeping obstacles for businesses by taking out the mundane work of the operation and granting them the opportunities to focus on creativity and strategic perspective to provide better service that meets the customers' needs.

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