Law Companies and Their Role in the Legal Market
October 08, 2025
general counsel trends legal operations innovation
This month, Colin Levy (Adjunct Professor at Albany Law School and GC at Malbek) and I authored a white paper addressing a recurring and common question we frequently receive from General Counsel: ‘Where and how do law companies fit into the legal ecosystem, our department’s strategy, and broader business goals?’.
GCs are asking this question for a few reasons:
- Law departments are facing surging demand driven by business growth, regulatory changes, and the explosion of AI, while traditional resourcing models struggle to keep up
- GCs are under pressure to demonstrate how legal contributes to the business, specifically, how company growth outpaces legal cost growth
- The significant rise and growth of legal tech, AI, and the law company market is too hard to overlook
This white paper touches on all of these questions and challenges, as well as educates on the origins of law companies, stemming from early-day legal innovation and legal process outsourcing companies. Modern law companies have evolved into integrating everything ‘under one roof’ to deliver outcome-based legal services. These components include practice of law, legal flex and managed services, legal operations, artificial intelligence (AI), and consulting (design and implementation).
Not only does the paper address current challenges, it also looks ahead: What do the next ten years hold for the legal market and the role of law companies? How will law companies and their experience with generative AI be used to deliver significant and efficient scale to routine legal matters and services? While these themes are briefly touched on at the end of this paper – stay tuned – as they will be the key focus of our next piece on ‘AI Law Companies and The Next Legal Frontier’.
Disclaimer: This post features insights from a guest author. Elevate occasionally invites select industry voices to share their perspectives on topics of interest to our audience. The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Elevate.
