William Byrnes' Tax, Wealth, and Risk Intelligence

Quote for this blogticle: “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” Oscar Wilde

In my last blogticle I looked at Conditioning Drivers for LPO Growth.  In this one, I turn to the types of LPO services undertaken and a link to a provider list.

Types of LPO Services

Examples of legal services currently outsourced with substantial fees to India include, non-exclusively:

(1) secretarial including presentations,

(2) legal transcription,

(3) legal publishing services,

(4) document review including e-discovery,

(5) legal research,

(6) business/market research,

(7) litigation support,

(8) contract drafting and review services,

(9) form completion and information population, such as tax forms

(10) intellectual property, such as patent application and compliance, and

(11) administrative such as accounting and billing.[1] 

Type of LPO Providers

The four categories of Indian outsource providers typically referred to are:

(1)     captive centers of corporate legal departments,

(2)     captive centers of large legal and audit firms,

(3)     third party niche providers, and

(4)     third party multiservice providers.[2]

LPO Expertise Legacy

Especially given the mass layoffs amongst large firms, the US law community is experiencing a high attrition among its US contract attorney staff, as well as its partners and associates.  On the contrary, India experiences a high retention, thus legacy experience, amongst its LPO providers. 

Moreover, LPO proponents state that Indian LPO multiservice providers may be leveraged by their US counterparts to (1) reduce fixed staffing costs of associates and paralegals, (2) mitigate the capital investment and IT operational costs necessary for purchasing, implementing, and keeping abreast of, legal technology for document review, and (3) cross-fertilization obtained form experience with multitudes of varying projects.[3]

List of LPO Providers

The website Prism Legal provides a vendor list of 111 firms providing outsourced legal service in India and elsewhere for the US and UK markets.[4]  

The Prism Legal list also includes corporations and law firms leveraging legal offshore services, such as Dell, American Express, Dupont, Puarolator Courier Inc., General Electric and Microsoft, as well as top law firms such as Clifford Chance, Allen & Overy, Millbank Tweed, Jones Day, Kirkland & Ellis, White & Case; and Chadbourne & Parke.[5]

In my next blogticle, I will turn to the Risk Management of Important Issues of LPO.  Look forward to your comments to any of my blogticles.  Professor William Byrnes (www.llmprogram.org)

---

[1] Offshoring Legal Services to India: an Update (Market Research Report), Valuenotes Database Pvt. Ltd., July 2007.  Also see Why and What Lawyers Should Consider Outsourcing, Ron Friedmann LLRX.com, Sept 1, 2008 (available at http://www.llrx.com/features/legaloutsourcingoptions.htm).

[2] Contract with India: Legal outsourcing, Jim Middlemiss, Financial Post (Canada), April 25, 2008.

[3] Why and What Lawyers Should Consider Outsourcing, Ron Friedmann LLRX.com, Sept 1, 2008 (available at http://www.llrx.com/features/legaloutsourcingoptions.htm).

[4] http://www.prismlegal.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=88&Itemid=70#Intro (last visited October 30, 2008).

[5] Also see Contract with India: Legal outsourcing, Jim Middlemiss, Financial Post (Canada), April 25, 2008; U.S. firms outsource legal services to India, Cynthia Cotts and Liane Kufchock, Bloomberg News, August 21, 2007; and India Lures Corporate Outsourcing, Jonathan Hill, Law Technology News, October 14, 2008.