ALSP Integreon has a Content Group – What Else Can Be Outsourced?

When one thinks of Integreon one understandably thinks of legal process work. But, they also have a division that makes corporate content for their clients. And to that end the 3,000-person legal sector company has formed a partnership with Turtl, a content creation group.

For example, Integreon does things like make pitch books for corporates and presentations for law firms. Which makes one think: what else can law firms outsource to ALSPs beyond legal process matters…?

Integreon now will be using Turtl’s platform in the company’s global Creative Services practice to deliver ‘compelling’ digital materials to clients. The group has bases in the US, UK, India and the Philippines.

It’s further evidence that once you get into process and non-advisory support work in the legal sector there are no end of opportunities. In fact, when you stop to consider it, why not have ALSPs do nearly every process and operational task that law firms and inhouse legal teams are not best designed to do themselves? That would allow the lawyers to just focus on being lawyers – which is the end goal, isn’t it?

Of course, that depends on whether the outsourced service is going to be as good or better than what you run internally….which is a whole other question. From experience, some are, and some are not – with the latter making one wonder how they stay in business by offering a worse service than the original company which decided to outsource that stream of work.

But, even so, we often forget that around half of any law firm’s staff numbers are made of allied professionals who are not fee earners. Which then raises the question: what tasks really do need to remain inside a law firm?

Innovation and IT management clearly needs to be handled internally still as it is always so specific to the needs of that firm and is of high strategic importance to the daily workflow, not to mention vital in terms of data security. Stripping those roles out would not make sense. But does business development, accounting/fee collection, client onboarding, building management, and other areas need to be owned by a partnership of lawyers?

Some law firms are now looking at reducing the amount of office space they hold due to the new home-working culture that has taken root during the pandemic. But, maybe that’s just the beginning of unpicking the current cost model of law firms?

And before dismissing the idea, it’s worth considering that law firms are themselves in many ways an outsourced service that corporates prefer not to keep entirely inhouse.

But, back to Turtl. They say that they use a ‘psychology-based format [to produce content], which has been scientifically proven by Lumen Research to boost read times by 73% (vs a PDF)’.

After having a look (see link above), it’s kind of a digital flipbook format with lots of links to click through to get more info as you turn each page, which is visually interesting – if you can get someone to open it and read it in the first place.

An example of a project that Turtl did for Citibank.

Murray Joslin, Executive Vice President of Global Creative Services and Business Enablement at Integreon, said: ‘Our new partnership with Turtl underscores Integreon’s commitment to combining the strengths of ideation (right brain) and logic (left brain) to achieve optimal outcomes for our clients.

‘Integreon is always focused on expanding our capabilities and proactively finding innovative partners. We look forward to sharing the powerful combination of Turtl technology and Integreon managed services expertise with the market.’

[ Note: the whole left brain/right brain thing has been around for a while now, but it has also been shown to be not actually grounded in science. See link here to article that debunks the idea. ]