Legal Outsourcing: The Gateway To Enhanced Legal services The latest sector to jump to the outsourcing bandwagon is the law. After the numerous call centers and IT firms, the legal institutions abroad are taking baby steps in outsourcing. As a matter of fact, India has become the favorite of the MNCs for outsourcing and the next wave of outsourcing will be in the form of LPO or Legal Process Outsourcing. According to the industry estimates, a whopping $4 billion legal work might be outsourced within a few years. However, Legal Outsourcing is yet to take off in full steam in the Asian nations.
The term Legal Outsourcing denotes the off shoring of legal and paralegal works to a foreign country like India. This is done because the company can avail the services of qualified and extremely competent law professionals at a reduced rate. These works can include transcription, legal documentation, document review and legal research etc. The benefits of the legal process Outsourcing is manifold.
A law firm in USA can dramatically improve its quality of work and output by resorting to Legal Outsourcing. First of all, by outsourcing the documentation and backup related works a law firm can concentrate better on its core activities. One major advantage of getting the work outsourced is significantly reduced running cost.
A law firm needs to pay the company doing the job for it much less than what it has to pay to a full time and regular employee. It also gets rid of the continual process of hiring new people and imparting training to them. All these factors translate to increase in the profit margin. By providing Litigation Support to a law company abroad, a Domestic or offshore Outsourcing firm also stands to gain.
The existing BPO companies can switch to KPO and LPO operations without spending much on infrastructure. Additionally, the pay packages are much better compared to regional work. The variety of legal work also gives the lawyers of the outsourcing company the chance to enhance their skills in various aspects of foreign and international law.
Therefore, it can be conceived as an opportunity for boosting their careers. Initially some of the BPO companies preferred to hire third party independent companies for getting their work outsourced. It helped them to accomplish the work without spending after infrastructure development and startup expenses.
However, this would not be a good idea for the LPO companies. Rather it would be better for the LPO companies to get their work done by opening their own subsidiaries abroad. The clients of the law firms want absolute security of their precious data. So it is a must that while outsourcing the legal firm abroad should ensure that the company to which it is outsourcing has proper people to do the service efficiently.
The procedures of legal work are tiresome and elaborate. If a lawyer of a firm has to spend all his energy and time in recording the moves and taking backups he would not be able to focus on the core work. Therefore, Outsourcing Offshore Legal Services is a worthy choice for such firms. However, one has to remember that legal outsourcing is still at a nascent stage compared to business process outsourcing. Law is a very sensitive subject that needs careful handling. In case a law firm is tying up with a third party company abroad for outsourcing, it should check the provider company's track record and reputation in the market.
Larry Heirendt is author of this article on Legal Outsourcing. Find more information about Legal Outsourcing here.
