Amalga Group founder Jens Erik Gould argues that nearshore staffing can help US law firms expand operational capacity, improve client intake and make better use of legal technology without building larger permanent teams.
The company supplies legal intake, call-centre, records-retrieval and back-office support through nearshore teams, including operations in Monterrey and Mexico City. Its model combines lower-cost staffing with working hours that overlap closely with those of US businesses.
That proposition has obvious appeal to firms facing recruitment pressures and rising technology costs. It still needs to be judged on more than the hourly rate. Supervision, data security, service quality and the ability to integrate external staff into existing workflows can determine whether the arrangement produces a genuine saving.
In a Lawyer Monthly interview, Gould said nearshore professionals could help legal departments implement systems including artificial intelligence tools, contract lifecycle management platforms, e-discovery software and case-management technology.
His argument was that legal teams are often expected to manage new technology while continuing with their normal workload. External specialists can provide the additional capacity needed to configure systems, organise data, train employees and support users after implementation.
Amalga said in March 2026 that it had opened a larger operations site in Monterrey. The site had been active since January and was supporting legal operations, software engineering, customer service and back-office work.
The expansion shows how the company is trying to move beyond supplying individual workers. It is also offering teams responsible for defined processes, service levels and operational support.
Those models carry different financial implications. A firm hiring individual nearshore workers usually remains responsible for assigning work, monitoring performance and managing priorities. Under a managed-service arrangement, more responsibility may sit with the provider, although the contract must make clear who owns each part of the process.
Amalga promotes its Mexico-based staffing model as costing between 40% and 50% less than comparable US hiring. That is a company claim, not an independently established saving, and the result will vary according to the roles involved, contract structure and support required.
Local employment costs help explain the interest. US Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that receptionists and information clerks in the Salt Lake City-Murray area earned an average of $17.88 an hour in May 2024. The broader office and administrative support category averaged $23.53 an hour.
Those wage figures do not include benefits, recruitment, equipment or the internal cost of managing staff turnover. They also do not prove that outsourcing will be cheaper.
A proper comparison should include provider fees, minimum staffing commitments, training, software integration, internal supervision, security controls, errors, rework and the cost of moving the work elsewhere if the arrangement ends.
A lower hourly cost only improves the firm’s finances when the nearshore team performs the work reliably and requires less management effort than the existing approach.
The financial case for nearshoring may extend beyond labour savings.
Law firms frequently invest in new systems but struggle to move employees away from spreadsheets, email chains and established manual processes. Software that is poorly configured or rarely used can become an expensive overhead rather than a productivity tool.
A nearshore team may give a firm temporary implementation capacity without requiring it to recruit permanent staff for a limited project. After launch, the same team might continue with system administration, reporting, data maintenance and user support.
The return may therefore come from getting more value out of technology the firm has already bought, rather than simply paying less for implementation work.
That benefit is not automatic. Firms need to define the provider’s responsibilities before work begins. A nearshore employee supporting an internal project is different from a provider taking responsibility for the performance of an entire process.
Without clear ownership, the firm may assume the provider is managing implementation while the provider believes it is only supplying staff.
Amalga has also applied its nearshore model to bilingual answering and client-intake services.
In a company article published in July 2026, Gould argued that Utah businesses risk losing potential customers when calls go unanswered or cannot be handled in the caller’s preferred language. The article promoted a mix of live receptionists, automated systems and hybrid answering models.
The material was written by Amalga and should be treated as the company’s commercial case rather than independent evidence of improved performance.
The underlying issue is relevant to law-firm finances. Firms may spend heavily on advertising, referrals and search visibility, only to lose an enquiry when a caller reaches voicemail or receives a slow response.
US Census Bureau data shows that 21.5% of Salt Lake County residents aged five or older speak a language other than English at home. Hispanic or Latino residents account for 22.9% of the county’s population.
Those figures do not establish that an outsourced answering service will increase revenue. They do suggest that law firms serving the area should examine whether their intake arrangements reflect the languages spoken by potential clients.
Performance should be measured through results rather than call volume alone. Useful figures include the proportion of enquiries that become consultations, the percentage of consultations converted into clients, response times, abandoned calls and the total cost of acquiring each signed matter.
An answering service may handle more calls while producing poorly qualified appointments. In that case, activity increases without improving revenue.
Nearshore staffing also creates confidentiality, information-security and professional-responsibility risks.
These concerns become more serious when external workers can access client files, medical records, litigation documents or internal systems. Where a law firm acts as a business associate to a healthcare organisation, a nearshore provider that creates, receives, maintains or transmits protected health information on the firm’s behalf may be treated as a business-associate subcontractor.
US Department of Health and Human Services guidance says the relevant written agreement should address permitted uses, security safeguards, breach reporting, subcontractors and the return or destruction of information when the relationship ends.
A provider’s general statement that it is HIPAA-compliant is not enough. Firms should examine security controls, certifications, data locations, subcontracting arrangements, incident-response procedures and contractual liability.
Outsourcing also does not transfer the lawyer’s professional obligations.
American Bar Association guidance allows lawyers to outsource legal and nonlegal support work, but supervising lawyers remain responsible for competent representation. They must take reasonable steps to ensure that external lawyers and nonlawyers act consistently with the firm’s professional duties.
Nonlawyer employees must not provide legal advice, and firms must also consider the specific professional rules in every state where they practise.
Routine intake, document retrieval and system support may be suitable for an outsourced process with clear controls. Legal advice and decisions affecting the substance of a client’s case require closer professional oversight.
Nearshore staffing should be assessed against the full operating result. Lower wages matter, but so do accuracy, flexibility, response times and the amount of supervision the arrangement demands.
Before starting, a firm should record its existing staffing costs, intake conversion, backlogs, error rates, response times and technology usage. Those figures provide a baseline for judging whether a pilot has worked. The provider should then be measured against agreed outcomes. A successful programme might reduce administrative backlogs, improve call conversion, increase system usage or release internal employees for higher-value work.
Gould and Amalga are presenting nearshoring as an operating model rather than simply a source of inexpensive labour. Law firms should test that case against their own figures before making a long-term commitment.
A pilot should show whether the team delivers accurate, secure and consistent service at a lower total cost than the firm’s existing approach. Cheaper staffing may help the calculation, but it is not enough on its own.
