Extract from Stephanie Wilkins’s article “Winston & Strawn Launches Winston Legal Solutions, a Tech-Powered, Right-Staffing Venture for Low-Complexity Work”
On Wednesday, Am Law 100 firm Winston & Strawn introduced Winston Legal Solutions, a new lower-cost, right-staffing model to assist with low-complexity and routine tasks that are part of its transactional, litigation and regulatory legal services offerings. The new venture encompasses the firm’s existing e-discovery, managed review, information governance and trial support capabilities, according to the news release. Winston Legal Solutions will be available to all clients across all practices going forward.
In speaking with Legaltech News, John Rosenthal, chair of Winston’s e-discovery and information governance practice, noted that law firm clients have become sophisticated purchasers of legal services in recent years and are ahead of law firms when it comes to their staffing and roles. Clients and the broader legal services market have been pushing the concept of right-staffing into the law firm space, which is largely still stuck in a “paralegal-associate-partner” model, he said.
“And I don’t think that model necessarily works for a lot of our clients for certain kinds of work, [where] they don’t want a partner-track associate at $700 an hour,” he added. “If clients can’t get that level of talent at the right price inside the law firm, they’re naturally going to do what they’ve already done. They’re going to go to the outsourced legal service market.”
Winston Legal Solutions was created to curb exactly that loss of low-complexity legal services to alternative providers.
