LPO: New Comers Shine!

New names into the LPO space, SDD Global, JuriMatrix and Stratify recently featured in a Business Standard article. While SDD Global has made earlier appearences in the the media, thanks largely to its association with Hollywood (and its funny a la Borat!), this is about the first time Stratify, an Indian promoted Discovery software company appeared among "LPO" vendors. Some snippets:

Sony Pictures had to prepare an ‘opinion letter’ (outlining the activity and the risks involved) for insurance firms in order to secure cover for shooting a movie, and the movie’s fate hinged on the letter and the cover.

Preparing the letter was a 400-man hour job which would have cost $250,000 to get done in the US and Sony gave it a second thought. Eventually, the job was done in India for $43,000.

...

In comes Stratify, which has developed proprietary software, eDiscovery, which has automated document search and collection and tracks production of legal documents, a soft of product lifestyle management for law firms.

Stratify helps do away with many of the labour-intensive legal research processes and crashes time and effort needed to collect documents and communication relating to a particular case.

“We help reduce costs, errors and timelines,” said Ramana Venkata, President and CEO, Stratify, funded by the VC arm of the CIA In-Q-Tel, Intel Capital and Mobius VC. It plans to invest $10 million over three years in organic growth and much more in inorganic growth.

I am glad to see my hypothesis that 'LPO growth can be rather fast (in fact phenomenal) if LPO vendors embrace Legal Tech more aggressively' seeing some proof albeit the other way round (legal tech companies embracing LPO!). I think developing and leveraging technology not only lowers costs, betters turn around times but also lends a notion of measurability to the offshored process. And that can make a big difference in a prospect's mind. After all, a vendor using tech can quote Peter Drucker, "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it!" to say they can manage it!

Shine on!