James Alberg | Lawyer

One of the deans of outsourcing, a tough negotiator who commands the respect of major corporate clients.

—Chambers USA

James Alberg is widely recognized around the world as an authority on software, technology and IT outsourcing.

Jim has been handling technology-driven deals for more than four decades, primarily for customers. He structures and negotiates multinational IT and business process outsourcing, software licensing and distribution relationships, and related corporate transactions. Often he represents clients in both first- and second-generation deals. Before joining Pillsbury, Jim was SVP and general counsel at a leading software company and in-house counsel at two other Fortune 500 companies. Jim was a partner in the firm for over 20 years, led Pillsbury’s Global Sourcing & Technology Transactions practice for 10 years and has served on the Firm’s Managing Board and Compensation Committee.

Representative Experience

Structured and negotiated a long-term agreement between one of the world’s largest industrial companies and Microsoft to provide cloud, retained email and collaboration services for more than 300,000 users.
Structured and negotiated a core banking systems transformation project for a large, internet-based bank following a competitive procurement process that involved a number of leading suppliers.
Structured and later renegotiated a $2.8 billion series of global BPO and ITO transformational outsourcing transactions between The Nielsen Company and Tata Consulting Services that stretched across 100 countries.

Led an integrated team of Pillsbury lawyers and consultants in a series of transformational global IT infrastructure and AD&M outsourcings with IBM and Wipro for one of the world’s largest providers of financial asset management services to institutional investors. The transactions are expected to generate significant savings, refresh their technology capabilities, and enable their private cloud computing initiative. The Pillsbury team managed the competitive procurement and led the negotiations with all of the potential suppliers.

Negotiated a second generation IT outsourcing for Dun & Bradstreet to move its IT infrastructure from CSC to Acxiom, and later negotiated its transfer to Ensono.

Negotiated an offshore “back office” knowledge processing transaction for a global health care information provider to provide services to its customers.

Led the renegotiation of a large consumer credit card issuer's credit card production services agreement to provide lower cost, higher SLA’s, and color statements.

Negotiated a series of outsourcings for Capital One’s credit card processing and information technology infrastructure.

Negotiated a series of application development, market data, and deployment agreements for Merrill Lynch with Thomson Financial, Siebel and IBM for Merrill’s next generation broker workstation.

Negotiated the sale of GE’s U.S./Canadian outsourcing business to IBM and GE’s Australian outsourcing business to CSC, with parallel outsourcings to IBM and CSC for the U.S. and Europe/Australia, respectively.

Led the outsourcing of Educational Testing Service’s worldwide Information Technology infrastructure along with re-architecture of ETS’s core business systems.

Negotiated a series of software licenses and software development agreements for a strategic restructuring of customer service and collection systems for one of the world’s largest credit card issuers.

Professional Highlights

Recognized by Chambers USA since 2006 for Outsourcing – National and Technology and IT Outsourcing – DC; Chambers Global for Outsourcing (2009–2026); and The Legal 500 U.S. for Outsourcing – Leading Lawyer (2008–2019); Hall of Fame (2020–2025).
Frequently speaks on technology-related matters at forums hosted by ITechLaw, Practising Law Institute, the Northern Virginia High Technology Council and other industry and bar associations.

Honors & Awards
- Named as a Thomson Reuters Stand-out Lawyer (2026)
- PLC Which Lawyer?, Telecoms Media and IT, IT and E-Commerce—Washington, DC (2007)
- Best of the Best USA, Information Technology, Euromoney/Legal Media Group (2009, 2011)
- IAM Licensing 250, Technology Licensing, Intellectual Asset Management Magazine (2010–2011)

Publications
- Don’t Forget About Opportunities To Outsource Buyouts, Feb. 16, 2009.

Education

J.D., Boston University School of Law, 1977

B.A., Political Science and Computer Science, Union College, 1974
cum laude

Admissions

District of Columbia

New York

Massachusetts

James L. Alberg

Areas of Focus

Practices

Representative Experience

Professional Highlights

Jim's Insights