Legal outsourcing

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Legal outsourcing refers to the practice of a law firm or corporation obtaining legal support services from an outside law firm or legal support services company. When the outsourced entity is based in another country the practice is sometimes called Offshoring.

Legal Outsourcing has gained tremendous ground in the past few years in the United States and UK. Legal Outsourcing companies, primarily in India and the Philippines, have had success by providing services such as document review, legal research and writing, drafting of pleadings and briefs, and patent services outsourcing.

In-house law departments of major multinational corporations outsource some of their work in order to save costs. While it will not be prudent to list those firms here for confidential reasons it is expected that as they move to save costs they will outsource more work. Some of the largest firms in the world are proponents of the proper use of outsourcing and are frequently cited by mainstream and specialized news agencies.

Initially, the Asian subcontinent were targets for different types of outsourcing with the legal field gaining traction. However, in recent years the so called "near shore", "back-door" "specialized legal firms" have sprung up to satisfy law firms and corporations that demand quality and confidentiality.

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[edit] Advantages

Most firms and corporations outsource primarily for cost saving measures and this is considered the biggest advantage for legal outsourcing. While an attorney in major legal markets such as the US charge from $150–350 dollars/hour for performing rote services, countries that are offering legal outsourcing charge a fraction of this. Some countries, such as India and the Philippines, have gained prominence because some of their attorneys with higher degrees work at a fraction of this rate. This has attracted major corporations to outsource specific types of work in their legal departments. This trend is predicted to increase.[1]

In Gurgaon and Bangalore, India the industry has benefited from the Global Financial Crisis, due to the increasing number of litigations and bankruptcies. [1]

India has also seen some Legal projects being outsourced, where the clients themselves have directly sent few attorneys to india to supervise the project, to ensure increased quality and data security. Moreover, these days LPO's are adopting strict compliance with IT security policies and many LPO's have already obtained ISO 27001 certification for information security management.

[edit] Criticisms

One of the major concerns with legal outsourcing is the potential for breach of clients confidentiality. Another concern is that the people performing legal work in different countries are not bound by the same ethical standards attorneys are subject to at home.[2]

However, there were ethics opinions from various state Bar Associations (New York [3] San Diego [4]) and recently, the American Bar Association [5] that lay down the framework for ethical legal outsourcing.

[edit] A dream that hasn't come true

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Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2009)

LPO firms in india had predicted an annual growth of 200% due to recession related litigation, increased need for cost saving in the U.S., etc, their expectations have not been come true. Major reason for this being U.S. Lawyers compromising their fees, due to recession and job losses. secondly many small LPO's in india have really messed up the services, though they promised a high quality legal work to the client. this has resulted in bad opinion about outsourcing legal work among U.S. attorneys. starter LPO's are giving false impression to the clients, about their experience in dealing with projects, thereby causing harm to genuine LPO companies of india. Inspite of all this, LPO industry has seen a growth of at least 40 - 60% during last 1 year. Some areas of law have also seen drastic collapse due to recession, (eg. Real Estate), but litigation document review, corporate compliance etc have gained pace, resulting in good amount of profits for LPOs.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Matthew Sullivan, Changes Ahead in Sourcing U.S. Legal Services in 2009
  2. ^ Call My Lawyer ... in India - TIME
  3. ^ New York Bar Association Opinion
  4. ^ San Diego Bar Association Opinion
  5. ^ ABA Ethics Opinions Allow Foreign Legal Outsourcing

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