Paralegals, document review, legal operations and intake staffed in-country, working inside your systems, with legal judgment staying with your counsel.
Before a firm sends any work offshore it inherits a duty it cannot delegate.
ABA Model Rule 1.6 requires lawyers to make reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorized access to or disclosure of client information, and that obligation follows the data to every vendor and every person who touches it. Model Rule 5.3 makes the supervising lawyer responsible for a nonlawyer's work product, and Rule 5.5 bars offshore staff from anything that constitutes the practice of law. A ranked list of providers does not answer whether an engagement satisfies those rules. A framework does and it is the one you should hold us to as well.
Of corporate law departments already use alternative legal service providers (Thomson Reuters, Georgetown Law and Oxford's Saïd Business School, 2025)
Cost saving, depending on the function
Functions that run under attorney supervision
ABA Model Rules that govern the engagement: 1.6, 5.3 and 5.5
Quick answer
Legal outsourcing is the use of dedicated outside professionals for legal support work, such as paralegal tasks, contract review, document drafting and legal research, while attorneys keep legal judgment and advice. Connext recruits, employs and manages those professionals in the Philippines, Colombia, Mexico and India; they work in the firm's or legal department's systems under attorney supervision.
Paralegals
Draft pleadings, motions and discovery documents, review medical and billing records, organize evidence, prepare trial exhibits and research case law. An attorney reviews and signs every filing and keeps all advice to the client: a paralegal gives no legal opinions and sets no strategy.
Document review and e-discovery
Work the review stage of the EDRM: coding documents for relevance and privilege, flagging issues and auditing against a protocol your firm defines. Final privilege determinations and production decisions stay with the attorney who owns the call under Rule 1.6.
Legal operations support
The administrative backbone of the caseload: maintaining case management systems, coordinating documents across matters, tracking deadlines and calendars, and managing billing and vendor records. None of it touches legal judgment.
Legal intake and case support
The front end of a matter: collecting intake documentation, requesting and organizing medical records or accident reports, and preparing files for attorney review. Conflict checks, the client relationship and the decision to accept representation stay with the supervising lawyer.
Every one of these is process driven work that does not require a law license to execute. The percentage is the typical saving against domestic delivery; the line under it is the supervision the function still needs.
Relevance, privilege and responsiveness across large volumes of electronically stored information. Runs under an attorney-approved review protocol, with quality control sampling.
Invoices checked against outside counsel billing guidelines, with non-compliant entries flagged. Needs your billing guidelines and access to your e-billing platform.
Formatting and proofreading, court filing deadlines and docket calendars, binders and exhibits. Needs attorney direction, and attorney review of anything filed.
Defined data points pulled from signed contracts into structured output that feeds a CLM system or a deal workbook. Needs a schema agreed before the first contract is read.
Transcripts read and turned into structured summaries keyed to topics or issues, plus exhibit indexing and chronologies. Needs trial team review of every summary produced.
Target company documents reviewed inside the data room against defined risk categories, with summary reports deal counsel relies on. Needs a diligence checklist, and deal counsel reviewing the output.
Patent docketing and deadline tracking, trademark watching, portfolio management and prior art searching. Needs patent attorney supervision of search and analysis.
Regulatory developments tracked across jurisdictions, compliance matrices and calendars kept current. Breadth of coverage is the point. The materiality assessment stays with a domestic attorney.
First drafts of standard commercial contracts from approved templates, and upkeep of the template library. Needs an approved playbook with fallback positions on the clauses that matter.
Case law retrieval and summarization, statutory and regulatory tracking, and research memoranda. The attorney defines the research question and reviews the answer.
The pattern is the same across all ten: the offshore team absorbs the volume, and the domestic attorney keeps the judgment. That division is what keeps the work compliant with ABA Model Rules on supervision, confidentiality and competence, wherever the team sits.
A security posture you can verify against evidence, not adjectives.
SOC 2 Type II measures controls over a sustained audit period, not a point in time. Ask for the report, the attestation and the audit window. Connext holds it and documents the controls rather than asserting frameworks it cannot evidence.
Least-privilege access with admin rights held by named individuals, and revocation the day a contract ends. Single sign-on, multi-factor authentication and end-to-end encryption on every file transfer.
No downloading or storing files on individual machines, and no file sharing through email or consumer transfer tools. Plus a documented incident response plan that assigns roles, classifies severity and defines when you are notified.
Privilege survives an offshore engagement only when confidentiality is a binding term. Scope of work, access levels by role, data protection obligations, and conflict checks before anyone touches a matter. NDAs bind the provider and each individual assigned to your work.
Rarely because the offshore professional lacked skill. Usually because the firm's own setup left a gap.
Firms that assume the offshore hire will work out what needs attorney review end up with exposure they never intended. The fix is a written protocol, agreed before the work starts, naming which decisions require sign-off.
Routing every message through one point of contact instead of bringing the person into daily case discussions buys you a slower ramp and more rework.
Granting broad case management or document system access before defining what the role actually needs creates a security gap and leaves the new hire unclear on what they own. Scope to the role, then widen it as trust builds.
Skipping the check before file access creates exposure that has nothing to do with the hire's competence and everything to do with process discipline.
Wherever the work arrives in predictable spikes or large document volumes.
Discovery requests and responses, medical and billing record review, and e-discovery platform work across the EDRM stages.
Purchase agreements, deeds and closing statements, plus title searches. The firm keeps the closing relationship.
Visa applications, USCIS forms and supporting documentation. Client contact, interviews and hearings stay with the attorney.
Medical records, accident reports and demand letters. The attorney still owns coverage analysis and negotiation.
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