Legal Process Outsourcing or LPO as it is popularly known is a practice through which law firms seek legal assistance and services from another law firms from either within or outside their own country. The kind of services sought by the firms outsourcing are legal research, writing legal documents, review of documents, drafting of pleadings, contracts management, litigation support, document discovery, Intellectual Property focussed services and patents services (patent prior art search, patent portfolio management, patent optimisation and patent/trademark filing processes).
LPO has become a compelling option for most companies in the west. Law firms in the US and the UK have seen the worst economic fallout in the past few years. As a result they have started looking for options to reduce their costs. Legal services are very expensive in the US and the UK with hourly rates for lawyers and consultants touching the roof. This has helped countries like India and Philippines in getting a lot of legal work from abroad. The LPO market was valued at $320 million in the year 2008 by Value Notes research and is likely to touch $640 million by the end of 2010. Pricing has been the key driver for legal firms wanting to outsource.
Though legal work in India and other major outsourcing hubs has grown in the past couple of years, there have been a few challenges as well. Some lawyers in the US and the UK have started compromising on their fees due to the economic meltdown. Some fledgling companies doing legal work in countries like India have not been able to deliver as promised. This has resulted in many companies in the US looking for legal firms within their country to ensure all processes involved are ethically followed. Besides, there are concerns looming large over the confidentiality of clients and the ethical composition of the outsourcing firms.
India has become one of the most popular destinations for companies wanting to outsource legal work. This is so because there are certain very obvious advantages like availability of English speaking, US and UK graduated, qualified attorneys working at less expensive rates. Besides the Indian legal system is much like its counterparts in the west.
Legal process outsourcing is a major chunk of the outsourcing pie. Though there are limitations and challenges surrounding this, we can expect only growth in this sector. If large and experienced BPO companies manage to work on the ethical and quality aspects of this vertical, we can expect unprecedented growth in the coming years.
http://www.ideamarketers.com/?articleid=1119730&CFID=35732806&CFTOKEN=61680156
The Philippines is a better fit in terms of providing legal support to U.S. law firms and companies since the laws in the Philippines are mostly patterned after the U.S. and its people speak American English. Filipinos are well versed in common U.S. idiomatic expressions which is crucial in reviewing documents such as emails. See http://www.americandiscovery.com.
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ReplyDeleteI wanted to know more about Outsourcing technical support, its importance, etc. So thaks for this post.