US alternative legal service provider (ALSP) Integreon has hired legal industry veteran Gabriel Buigas to its leadership team as it seeks to build out its contract management service amid rising demand from law firm and corporate clients. 

Buigas joins the Fargo, North Dakota-based company in the dual roles of executive vice president and head of Integreon’s contacts, compliance and commercial (CCC) services business unit. He has taken over from Jeffrey Catanzaro, who left Integreon to be PwC's principal of legal business solutions in New York. 

Commenting on Buigas' hire, Integreon chief executive Bob Rowe said he was the “right person” to take the lead on creating a “strong foundation” for the future growth and innovation of the company's contract management division. 

“Gabriel’s uniquely broad experience encompasses outsourced legal services, in-house corporate legal positions, professional services and law firms. His diverse knowledge ideally qualifies him to understand and bring additional innovation to our CCC client base and the organisation as a whole,” Rowe said. 

Buigas previously spent four years at rival ALSP UnitedLex, most recently as executive vice president of digital contracting and commercial solutions. He left UnitedLex in 2019 to move into independent strategic legal consulting in Miami, according to his Linkedin profile. 

Before landing at UnitedLex, Buigas spent nearly two decades in a number of in-house roles at Hewlett Packard, including senior vice president and deputy general counsel of the tech giant’s printing and personal systems group, where he led a team of 34 attorneys and oversaw all legal operations related to the development of displays, printers, web services and graphics solutions. 

In his role as head of Integreon’s CCC unit, Buigas said he hopes to leverage his leadership experience to develop and deliver contracting solutions to a wider client base. 

“We will continue to grow the Integreon business with a relentless focus on delivering material value to our clients in all our offerings,” he said in a statement. 

Founded in 1998, Integreon currently boasts more than 3,500 employees across six offices in the US, UK, India and the Philippines. The company is owned by New York private equity giant EagleTree Capital, which has invested about $2.7bn of equity capital since its inception. 

In addition to its contracting solution, Integreon provides law firms and corporate clients with digitised business enablement, litigation and risk and regulatory services. 

ALSPs have become increasingly prominent during the pandemic, with many law firms investing in their own in-house alternative legal service provision arms in order to keep up with the booming market. 

Earlier this year, a Thomson Reuters survey found the US ALSP had market ‘reached a point of maturity’ with more than 79% of law firms and 71% of in-house teams now engaging ALSPs for legal work, compared to 51% and 61% respectively in 2016.