LPO or Legal Process Outsourcing refers to the process wherein law firms and legal corporations outsource their legal processes to an offshore service provider. Legal support services has firmly established its root in the mainstream corporate culture across the globe. This model enables the attorneys, paralegals and other legal experts to outsource their work to different vendors in their locality and abroad. It is increasingly becoming a popular strategy among law firms and corporate legal firms, who are relentlessly trying to reduce their operating costs and focus more on their core competencies. Economic changes, globalization, and the growth of internet are some of the major aspects that have fueled the growth of legal process outsourcing in today’s time. Several companies, regardless of their size, outsource their legal services to a legal support services company.
Over the past few years, the Legal process outsourcing sector has transformed from being a pure labor investment play to a combination of best practices, process efficiency and quality control which uses technology to its core. It has also exceeded from the erstwhile stringent process and transformed into a more effectual and competent online process. LPO firms take special efforts to meet their clients’ requirements by signing service-level agreements, employing foreign-trained lawyers to oversee the work, having strict recruitment policies, stringently implementing processes featuring six sigma techniques and providing data security guarantees.
Legal process outsourcing covers the following services in general:
- Contract Drafting Services
- Contract management & review
- Document Review
- Deposition Summaries and Case Summaries
- Legal Research
- Legal Writing
- Paralegal Support
- Litigation Support
- Legal Data Entry
- Case management
Currently, India is the largest LPO destination for overseas firms. A number of economic, geographic, historical, legal, linguistic and political advantages can be reaped by a firm by way of outsourcing its legal support services. There are various advantages ranging from generous tax breaks, time differences, a well-educated and trained English-speaking workforce to a common law system similar to what is practised in the US and UK.
Opting to outsource legal services to an external vendor will help the firms in reducing their overall costs. Besides cost optimization, a legal support services company offers access to external talent, 24/7 support and the capability to scale its operations up or down as and when required. LPO is occurring in nearly all sectors of the legal industry. The work of lawyers, paralegals, legal secretaries and litigation support personnel is increasingly being performed by legal service providers on the other side of the globe. Outsourcing legal services is a step towards increasing a firm’s productivity and overall margin and becoming a smart legal organization.
