Recent legal research survey conducted by Altman Weil reports a wider acceptance of legal outsourcing as a business driver by international law firms and corporations. According to the survey, nearly 50% of law firm leaders believe that outsourcing legal work is now a permanent trend, which is up considerably from just over 10% in 2009. The acceptance of LPO is even more amidst large law firms. Almost 20% of law firms with 250 or more lawyers are presently following legal outsourcing. The use of contract lawyers is even higher, 87% of large law firms are presently employing contract lawyers, which is up from 57% in 2010.
It is often cheaper for a law firm to hire a lawyer in India than in the U.S. or U.K. In fact, some of the U.S. based law firms are hiring Indian lawyers to do work that paralegals do in the U.S. . For instance, paralegals draft pleadings and interview clients. They can go to court but can’t argue; and they gather evidence, do investigations, contact expert witnesses, make appointments, and work a lot with clients. Indian LPOs are providing similar kinds of services to the U.S. based law firms, at a fraction of cost of hiring a paralegal.
This is the other side that justifies why Indian LPOs are showing slow but continuous upward trend.
