The Slator Pro Guide: Language Expert Bureaus, published in May 2025, offers up-to-date insights for language expert bureaus (LEBs), a category designating small-scale language solutions integrators (LSIs).

Slator defines LEBs as businesses providing language services and solutions with an annual revenue of USD 1m or less — smaller than LSI boutiques, whose annual revenue ranges between USD 1m and USD 8m. 

LEBs are usually staffed by a small core group of two to 10 language professionals, often operating remotely. 

They achieve scalability by working with a network of contractors who are known to the core group members, preserving a focus on personalized service while allowing for larger work volumes.

Who starts an LEB?

There are two general groups of LEBs represented in the Pro Guide data. One group tends to have a “language-first” founder who has direct experience as a freelance linguist, or at a larger LSI, and has decided to scale their business into an agency model.

Slator Pro Guide: Language Expert Bureaus

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These LEBs tend to grow organically and have a heavier focus on quality and client relationships. At the same time, founders in this category may struggle early on with business management skills, which they were less likely to obtain in their linguistic training or while freelancing.

The second category is LEBs with “business-first” founders. These founders are likely to have a business or technology background on top of their linguistic skills. With a greater focus on business operations, they may scale their LEB more aggressively and tend to “approach language services operations with a process and margin mindset.”

A Goldilocks Value Proposition: not too big, not too small

Whether grown from a single freelance linguist or begun as a savvy entrepreneurial venture, the value offered by LEBs derives from their small and flexible size.

With a heavy focus on client relationships, LEB founders tend to play a hands-on role in day-to-day operations including quality control (QA), sales, and client communications. However, the headcount at an LEB is large enough that they don’t have to turn away clients based on the founder/owner’s personal availability.

At the same time, the core team at many LEBs remains small enough for clients to build a professional rapport with specific permanent linguists. This boosts client confidence and promotes repeat business.

Several LEBs also reported intentionally limiting growth in order to “preserve what they see as their core value: trust-based, personalized service.”

Beyond small headcounts, LEBs also tend to specialize, narrowing the range of work they accept to match their expertise. This could mean limiting their work to specific domains like legal or medical documents, focusing on specific language variants (e.g. Québec French), or even prioritizing their physical presence in a particular region (e.g. the US state of Massachusetts).

Some LEBs limit the languages they work to only those spoken by the in-house team, allowing them to perform QA directly rather than relying on contractors. One LEB interviewed for the Pro Guide noted that they “decided to not offer languages we don’t speak ourselves because you just cannot, with 100% certainty, know that what you’re sending back to your client is of top quality.”

In many ways, by occupying this “sweet spot” between individual freelancers and boutique LSIs, an LEB is able to provide the personalized service that larger LSIs may forgo for any but their top-spending clients, while working with much larger volumes than a freelancer could handle alone.