A silent revolution is taking place in the legal sector. Once expected to do everything in-house, from contract review to regulatory compliance, legal departments are now facing the limitations. Due to tighter budgets, growing workloads, and more complicated legal environments, general counsels and directors of legal operations are now asking, “Who is best positioned to do this?” rather than, “Can we handle this?”
Managed Legal Services (MLS), a more astute and calculated approach to scaling, is becoming
the answer.
What Are Managed Legal Services?
Managed legal services is the allocation of certain legal duties to outside experts who take full operational responsibility, not only to assist but to achieve outcomes. This is not the usual case of outsourcing. It is the legal sector's answer to scalable, tech-integrated, and reasonably priced operations.
AECO defines MLS as “a solution to a legal problem, in the form of a predefined bundle of services, at a transparent price.” Other experts in the field define it similarly: outsourcing high- volume legal procedures to increase productivity and lessen the burden on internal legal resources. These mechanisms are for quantifiable, repeatable results, not band-aid solutions or short-term assistance.
This idea is the foundation of our MLS concept at LawFlex. With over 2,000 verified attorneys working in 50 jurisdictions, our solutions are designed to work with internal teams while fully assuming responsibility for the legal duties that impede them.
Why MLS Is Gaining Ground
The emergence of managed legal services indicates more general changes in the corporate and legal sectors. Many businesses are abandoning the old dichotomy of hiring or not employing. Managed Legal Services are the fastest-growing category of the global ALSP (Alternative Legal Service Provider) market, a multi billion dollar market that is continuing to grow each year.
The need for specialized, scalable, and fast support is growing as legal teams deal with the pressures of new legislation, cross-border data rules, and advancements like the EU AI Act. When a new rule is implemented, many legal teams lack the internal resources to review hundreds of contracts. MLS bridges that gap promptly, accurately, and completely transparently.
According to Thomson Reuters’ 2025 ALSP Report, 79% of in-house legal departments plan to increase their use of alternative providers in the following year. This shift is not about experimentation, it’s about survival.
How It Works: The LawFlex Model
One of the few ALSPs that provides operational results in addition to legal talent placement is LawFlex. Our MLS service is built for speed and insight, whether using AI technologies to redline documents or pre-execution contract risk evaluations. Our teams take ownership of whole workflows from beginning to end, which helps shorten review cycles and frees internal
counsel to concentrate on high-impact, strategic work.
One of our most sought-after services is helping clients comprehend how new laws or economic changes, like tariffs or the AI Act, may affect their existing contracts. We provide proactive legal insights based on in-depth study, going beyond compliance.
We also handle the “unloved but necessary” work that frequently ends up at the bottom of internal to-do lists: vendor contracts, NDAs, data protection forms, and other high-volume chores that still need accuracy and speed.
Challenging Outdated Assumptions
In the legal community, outsourcing was stigmatized for a long time as a temporary solution or financial compromise. However, that view is quickly shifting. MLS is increasingly viewed by forward-thinking legal teams as strategic capacity building rather than outsourcing.
Quality-related worries are also diminishing. Today's MLS professionals include former general counsel, alums of prestigious law firms, and specialized specialists with jurisdiction-specific experience. LawFlex guarantees clients more hands and intelligent brains through stringent screening and integrated compliance standards.
Why LawFlex?
LawFlex focuses on providing full legal operations—measured, managed, and aligned with your department's objectives—while others offer fragmented staffing options. We are more than just assisting you with staffing; we're helping you with smart scaling.
With a bilingual, cross-jurisdictional workforce, no long-term contracts, and a Tier 1 ranking by Chambers & Partners, LawFlex offers flexibility without sacrificing quality.
Without the need for long onboarding processes or permanent personnel, our legal operations specialists are trained to operate within your systems, timeframes, and standards.
Let’s Talk Strategy
Is your legal team buried in documents? Facing capacity issues? Or simply ready to try a smarter way to work?
Let’s build a customized MLS solution together.
Email us at info@lawflex.com or visit www.lawflex.com to learn more.
Hire a lawyer. Hire a legal operations partner. Hire smarter—with LawFlex.