The eDiscovery industry is being reshaped by expanding data volumes, accelerating use of AI, and an increasingly fragmented tools landscape. For many clients, the challenge is not any single change, but the accumulation of them which requires careful coordination and technical expertise to ensure legal defensibility.
Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs) help clients navigate these challenges, translating AI from promise into practical use-cases, guiding defensibility strategy, and resolving complex data issues.
For the first time, the eDiscovery: State of the Industry Report brings together leading ALSPs, in a collaboration between L.E.K. Consulting and DLTA, to share insights drawn from aggregated data, analysis, and perspectives representing thousands of matters. The report aims to provide the industry with an end-to-end view of discovery workflows, AI and technology adoption, and the expanding role of ALSPs.
Highlights
- Discovery workflows are non-linear and iterative, with ALSPs responsible for end-to-end execution across 500–550 petabytes of managed data, while actively managing 2.5–3x additional unseen data beyond hosted platforms.
- ALSPs are leading AI adoption for the industry, collectively piloting and deploying nearly 100 AI tools across the EDRM in 2025.
- ALSPs are playing a greater strategic advisory role often before matters even begin, guiding information governance, early scoping, and case strategy to improve downstream work steps.
- Variability across legal workflows, data environments, and client risk tolerances structurally impedes the emergence of a single end-to-end technology solution; ALSPs remain the operating layer that preserves chain of custody and ensures legal defensibility for clients.
Fill in the form to access your copy of eDiscovery: State of the Industry — The Shift Toward Advisory-Led, AI-Enabled Execution.
For more information, please contact us.
L.E.K. Consulting is a registered trademark of L.E.K. Consulting LLC. All other products and brands mentioned in this document are properties of their respective owners. © 2026 L.E.K. Consulting LLC
02112026090244