Legal Outsourcing has gained significant growth in the past few years in the United States. Because of the willingness of law firms to be a part of the global business, legal process outsourcing or LPO is widely emerging. Legal Process Outsourcing companies, mainly from India, have been successful in providing services such as legal research, litigation support, contract management review, legal document review, document drafting and management, Intellectual property rights, legal research and analysis and  immigration support etc.

In Legal Process Outsourcing vendors or in-house departments of organizations outsource legal work from off-shore areas where it is costly to perform like United States of America, Europe, UK, Germany and Australia. Legal process outsourcing is part of high-end knowledge outsourcing process involves in supporting to legal services companies, large law firms and individual lawyers to perform different legal activities.

India will be the best place as it was with a range of other business process outsourcing. Although Cost saving is the biggest attraction for the western firms that outsource their legal work. India’s legal services are widely considered as affordable, efficient, and skilled. Outsourcing the legal work to India costs up to 80 per cent less when compare to cost of using the services from American law firms.

The advantage of the time zone (9- to 13-hour difference between U S and India), skilled man power and the availability of English speaking attorneys are the main beneficiary things to grow India as an emerging legal process outsourcing hub in Asia. Legal process outsourcing process is picking up at its own rate and professionals with Indian law degrees are capital to multinational law firms.

Security concerns with reference to LPO Industry:

The business environment of a country is reinforced considerably by an environment of strong safety. India is well-known for IT and communication related services. In addition to this, legal process outsourcing (LPO), knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) etc, have paved more opportunities with great extent in accordance with flourishing IT sector strategies with  potential for employment and foreign exchange to the Indian employers and employees.

As the outsourced firm is based in another country, the practice is sometimes called legal off-shoring. LPO industry is expanding, which should see a boom in the up-coming years. The word ‘outsourcing’ is a simple agreement between an enterprise and service provider, in which the provider agrees to provide the necessary services, particularly data processing and information management, using its own staff and infrastructure to its own facilities.

LPO firms needs to be maintained secure environment and confidentiality. So building all those security concerns and then the ability to scale up is a challenge. There also is a great need for a strong business development in the target markets and companies who have a global presence can benefit best. In LPO industry customer privacy is so rooted in the legal culture, and is a fundamental aspect of legal professional ethics. Maintaining proper relationships with current and future customers is the asset for service providers.

In LPO industry there are two security concerns, one is data security and another one is physical security. Due to this reason Legal Process outsourcing is different from other knowledge process outsourcing in a primary sense. Recruiting an offshore employee in to LPO industry is different from other business outsourcing services. Hence lawyers should be Qualified and registered to advice their clients. As we discussed earlier as the area requires not only expertise in the respected field but also require the major concern on client’s security and confidentiality which becomes the hot burning topic among the firms associated with LPO services.

But Cat Technology ensures in-depth security measures when dealing with sensitive information, and also conducts multiple checks at various levels in order to meet our client’s requirements. Have been providing secured services to our clients with regards to every aspect of data protection, we cater a wide range of industries in terms of LPO Services.

US meltdown keeps LPO industry in India busy

At least one section of industry isn’t unhappy about the meltdown. The recession in the US is good news for the $200-250 mn legalprocess outsourcing (LPO) industry in India. While outsourcing of litigation work from the US and Europe has increased considerably, what is interesting is new forms of businesses like risk management, corporate compliance and know your customer guidance work from a number of international corporates.

This is prompting them to hire more people at a time when many other industries are either freezing recruitments or are firing.“Regardless of the extent of recession, the regulatory environment will only become more strict so companies will need to comply,” says  Sanjay Kamlani. The LPO setup a new risk management and assurance group recently.

Today companies want to know their risk profile so that they can be more transparent. “We are working with a large heavy machinery manufacturer in the US to understand the risk associated with the thousands of contracts they have with their vendors and suppliers,” said Ajay Agrawal.

Kamlani feels that as work on the $700 bn Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) with which the US Treasury Department plans to purchase distressed assets, especially mortgage-backed securities from the country’s banks starts, Indian LPOs could see a could see a lot more business.

Impact of the US recession on Indian LPO industry:

Legal Process Outsourcing is a rapidly growing industry at present and it tends to flourish in future. Right now only about 30% of the top ten Indian BPO vendors have shown interest to enter this segment. But according to industry experts, Most of the giant BPO industries also keenly watching and analyzing the marketing trend to enter this business in fore future.

When you lose something on one hand you are destined to get something else on the other. This simple law of nature seems to be relevant in the case of the impact of the US recession on Indian industries. Though the disaster in the US economy has badly hit the Indian IT sector, it is also giving ample business scope for the Legal Processing Outsourcing (LPOs) segment in the country.

With many top monetary firms, investment banks and enterprises declared bankrupt and many more to do same in near future, there’s a huge rise in demand for legal expertise and law consultancy services in US. According to a survey conducted by law department consultant Rees Morrison and American Lawyer editor Aric Press, the US law departments will spend about US$ 2 billion on legal outsourcing by 2013.

Further, it says, US corporate law departments will spend about 3 per cent of their budget on legal outsourcing, including the LPO. In this context, Indian LPO industry will play a major role in fulfilling this legal outsourcing demand, and already it is witnessing rise in the work flow amount in past few months.

More and more corporate houses and investment banks from the US are looking towards the Indian LPO industry for legal advisers to cut their costs. In the present globalize world, India is surely heading for its excellence stunning knowledge on offshore legal practice.