Legal Process Outsourcing

Why outsource in the UK?

2011-07-08T14:29:00.000+05:30

At a time when the UK’s economic outlook remains precarious, it can be difficult for businesses to grow and expand. However, with awareness and careful management there is room for businesses of all kinds to perform well and one way companies are able to do this is through the use of outsourcing.

Outsourcing here in the UK can reduce risk for businesses and help them to extend both their service offering and manpower at a time when the rise of operational costs could otherwise make this difficult. By partnering with outside specialists such as Ventura BPO Services businesses can reduce costs for projects, or a specific element of their operations, while enjoying the revenue generated.

Although outsourcing can take place within the premises of your own company, commonly one factor that can contribute to savings made is the eradication for purchase of equipment, software or the cost of premises when outsourcing is contracted off-site. Despite this, the largest benefit of outsourcing is undoubtedly the ability to have a larger workforce at your disposal on a quick and flexible basis. On top of this outsourcing projects or operational elements of your business means you will not be responsible for the cost of training these staff, nor will you need to employ them on a permanent basis. Outsourcing also allows you to tap into the skills of an external and flexible workforce with existing skillsets allowing businesses to grow and dip their toes in new waters while minimising risk and investment.

Where work is outsourced to experienced teams firms can see increased performance and productivity, as well as enjoying access to the knowledge of experts within the field that the business may otherwise struggle to secure. In this way utilising the service of outsourcers can help you adopt best practices and innovations as you can tap into their tried and tested methods and reap the rewards of their established contact networks.

Press Release: CPA Global celebrates success in Greater China IP market

2011-07-01T15:37:00.001+05:30

Growing client base underlines region’s strong focus on intellectual property
and increasing demand for professional IP services

Achievements mark second anniversary of Hong Kong office

CPA Global, the world's top intellectual property (IP) management specialist and a leading provider of legal services outsourcing (LSO), has made significant inroads into the Greater China market since opening its office in Hong Kong two years ago, helping a growing number of companies protect and manage their valuable IP assets.

On the second anniversary of its Hong Kong office, CPA Global is celebrating successful growth in Greater China (incorporating mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan), and an expanding client base, comprising leading corporations in sectors such as telecommunications, electronics, and semi-conductors.

Clients include international telecommunications solutions provider Huawei Technologies; leading global manufacturing companies Johnson Electric and Techtronic Industries (TTI); The Chinese University of Hong Kong; and China Patent Agent, one of China’s leading IP agencies.

Prior to opening its Hong Kong office, CPA Global had already forged successful business alliances in Japan and Korea, and established a strong operational presence in India. The aim of the Hong Kong office was to spearhead CPA Global’s business development in North and South East Asia, with a particular focus on the fast-growing Greater China region.

Commenting on the company’s achievements in the region over the past two years, CPA Global Group Chief Executive Peter Sewell said: “The phenomenal economic growth in Greater China has brought with it a stronger focus on intellectual property as companies in the region increasingly develop their own IP and recognise the value of that intellectual capital. Indeed, China is now the world’s fastest growing market for IP and the largest filer of international patents. We are delighted to have made such significant inroads into this important region since opening our Hong Kong office, and are pleased to be able to celebrate two successful years of helping clients throughout Greater China manage and protect their valuable IP assets.”

Joanne Hon, CPA Global's Head of Sales & Marketing, Asia, who has led the Hong Kong office since its opening, said: “As companies in Greater China have become more international in their outlook and operations, they have seen the benefits of enlisting professional IP management companies like CPA Global to help them manage their IP portfolios to ensure that their prized IP assets are protected and maintained. We are seeing increasing opportunities to work with companies throughout Greater China, as well as other parts of North and South East Asia. Earlier this month, we opened our first office in Korea, and we are planning to open further offices in China over the next couple of years.”

Commenting on their successful working relationship with CPA Global, Chris Murray, Senior Corporate Patent Attorney - Johnson Electric Group, said: "In appointing CPA Global to handle our patent renewals, we were seeking improved efficiency, cost savings, reliability and, above all, peace of mind. And that's exactly what they've delivered for us. This has enabled us to concentrate on other matters and not have to worry about our patent renewals as we know everything will be handled in timely fashion and without drama by CPA Global; and that we will be promptly informed and fully briefed should any issue arise. On top of this, their customer support teams are always quick to respond and friendly to deal with."

Added Emmanuelle Prono, Assistant General Counsel at Techtronic Industries (TTI): “When we looked at consolidating TTI Group’s IP renewal systems and processes, CPA Global was one of the very few IP service providers able to satisfy all of our needs in relation to the renewal of a large and diverse IP portfolio, as well as the monitoring of that portfolio. What made the difference was the proximity and quality of the service of CPA Global’s staff, whether based in Europe or Asia. We are very happy today with the services provided in maintaining and protecting our iconic brands and patents portfolio.”

Xiangling Zeng, Patent Attorney and Deputy General Manager at China Patent Agent (H.K.) Ltd, commented: “Our two companies have developed a strong business relationship and, with the ongoing growth of CPA Global’s Hong Kong office, we believe our relationship will continue to foster and grow.”

* * * *

About CPA Global

CPA Global is the world's top intellectual property (IP) management specialist, and a leading provider of legal services outsourcing (LSO). CPA Global supports many of the world’s best known corporations and law firms with a range of IP and broader legal services, helping them to manage risk, cost and capacity, and realise greater value for their businesses and their IP assets.

CPA Global helps its clients manage their valuable IP Rights, such as patents, designs and trademarks, ensuring that IP portfolios are protected, maintained and regularly reviewed in order to maximise value. Services include search, filing and renewals for patents and trademarks; trademark watching; portfolio valuation and optimisation; as well as IP management software.

Founded in Jersey, Channel Islands in 1969, CPA Global today employs more than 1,500 people, serving clients' needs in over 100 countries. CPA Global has offices in major international locations, including the UK, France, Germany, the USA, Australia, India, China, and Korea; with strategic partnerships in these and other important markets, including Japan.

CPA Global’s diverse client list ranges from major global corporations, headquartered in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific, to small and medium-sized enterprises and innovation start-ups; and from top international law firms to national and regional law and IP firms. Clients include leading Fortune 500 and FTSE companies, and two-thirds of the Global Lawyer 100.

2011 State of the LPO Sector Survey

2011-06-29T15:44:00.001+05:30

Last year Ravi Shankar, a Harvard Law graduate, administered the 2010 State of the LPO Sector Survey to study business fundamentals of the LPO industry in India at large. The report had (a) profiled LPO firms and (b) sought to understand how they market themselves.[1] Notable findings from the corresponding 2010 State of the LPO Sector Report include:

· Despite strong growth projections, it is a challenge for most LPO firms to attract clients: Why do LPO firms and commentators project strong industry growth, yet firms find it difficult to attract clients? One explanation offered by a plurality of LPO firms is that few firms capture most of the market.

· 2004 to 2007 may have been a “golden age” for starting a LPO firm: Outside of this three-year window, the number of LPO firms entering the industry appears to have fallen. Does this suggest that new entrants are unable to capture market share despite strong growth projections?

· BPO experience helps: In the view of one CEO, BPO companies possess two advantages: First, security infrastructure is in place—both for employees and data. Second, they have experience marketing themselves to an American and British client base.

Informed by the 2010 Survey as well as communication with LPO firms and relevant field experts, the 2011 Survey has evolved to ask LPO firms about their (a) clients, (b) revenue, and (c) opinion of often-cited market analysts. If you are interested please write to Ravi Shankar at IndianLPOSurvey@gmail.com

[1] A full copy of the 2010 Report is available at http://lposavvy.info/downloads/Ravi_Shankars_LPO_Survey_Report.pdf.

CPA Global hosts event on the latest trends in Cloud-based IP Management

2011-06-20T10:58:00.001+05:30

CPA Global, the world’s top provider of intellectual property (IP) management and leading provider of legal services outsourcing (LSO), today brought together IP experts in Palo Alto, Calif. for the company’s event IP in the Cloud: Managing Your IP while Keeping Pace with Innovation to explore the latest trends in cloud computing.

Featuring noted industry expert Mary O’Malley, Senior Patent Paralegal at eBay, Inc., the presentation focused on the growing popularity of Software as a Service (SaaS), specifically cloud-based IP management. Organizations that embrace this model find it increases data access speed and simplifies the IP process with minimal infrastructure.

“The practice of cloud-based IP management brings strategic value to corporations and enhanced client relationships to firms,” said Jim Lee, Sales Manager at CPA Global. “As a result, the growing industry trend has gained quite a bit of recent attention for the time and cost savings it offers companies.”

An early adopter of the SaaS model, O’Malley addressed the benefits of implementing a cloud-based IP solution. These include cost savings and the reduction of IT overhead, enhanced portfolio visibility, system customization, scalability, collaboration with outside counsel and inventors, as well as the use of the cloud to ensure business continuity and security. She also discussed how the cloud simplifies the management of information disclosure statements, a critical component of patent prosecution that is particularly time-consuming and burdensome.

The presentation also taught attendees how cloud computing can complement client-centric organizations, discussing how to leverage the model as a strategic business platform and highlighting its ability to enhance client-law firm relationships.

For more information on CPA Global, please visit www.cpaglobal.com.Read more: http://www.hostreview.com/news/110617-cpa-global-hosts-event-on-the-latest-trends-in-cloud-based-ip-management#ixzz1Pn6rNypJ

Press Release: CPA Global one of fastest climbers in Global Outsourcing 100

2011-05-30T10:34:00.002+05:30

Leading legal services outsourcing company CPA Global has leapt up the rankings of The Global Outsourcing 100®, a prestigious industry listing produced by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP).

CPA Global is one of the fastest climbers in the 2011 Global Outsourcing 100, which covers the leading players in all disciplines of outsourcing, including the largest IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) companies. CPA Global rose to 23rd place this year, compared with 42nd in the 2010 ranking and 60th in 2009. The company was also identified as one of the top 20 providers to both the financial services and technology sectors.

Companies selected for The Global Outsourcing 100 undergo a rigorously judged application process that assesses four critical characteristics: size and growth, customer references, organisational competencies, and management capabilities.

Commenting on the occasion, Anand Sharma, CFO and Head Management Service, CPA Global, said: "Being one of the fastest climbers in 2011 list, indeed marks a great achievement for CPA Global. The stride we have taken, from the 60th place to the 23rd place reinstates our committed focus on excellence, business capabilities, and best-in-class service standards for our esteemed customers."

He further added, "We continue in our endeavor to be the preferred partner in the space."

Leah Cooper, CPA Global's Director, Legal Services Outsourcing, said: "Many international corporations are already recognising the benefits of LSO, and the question they are increasingly asking us is not 'why LSO', but 'how' do they go about introducing LSO into their organisations."
Michael Corbett, IAOP Chairman and chair of the judges' panel, said: "CPA Global is to be congratulated on again being one of the fastest climbers in The Global Outsourcing 100 and to breaking into the top quartile. The Global Outsourcing Outsourcing 100 is a top industry ranking. The companies who make it into the listing are proven leaders and rising stars. They are the companies you want to partner with to achieve success and better outsourcing outcomes."

Note: * CPA Global defines 'pure-play legal services outsourcing provider' as a company whose sole outsourcing focus is in legal services rather than more general IT and business process outsourcing, etc.

For further information, please contact:
Avian Media
Isha Sharma
Mobile: +919818282734
Email: isha@avian-media.com

Guest Post: Will Outsourcing Still Enjoy the Limelight in the Years to Come?

2011-04-06T23:10:00.000+05:30

There are many things that outsourcing has achieved, both positive and negative – it has made a huge difference to the lives of people in countries like China and India where most of the manufacturing and service industries have relocated respectively because they can now find work in their own countries, but with a higher pay scale than the normal standard that had existed so far. However, for the countries that outsourced these jobs because of cost constraints, it has led to problems galore even though they’ve been able to reduce their overall expenditure considerably by paying less than half the usual amount in salaries.

Among the negatives of outsourcing are the facts that it is very hard to effect quality control when your operations are oceans away, and in the hands of people with a completely different culture. The security of operations is compromised at times, as is the quality of service provided. Also, in-house tensions flare up as locals realize that their jobs are being shifted offshore so that the company can cut costs and make more money. And factor in the fact that most governments are now cutting out tax breaks for companies that outsource, and you have many organizations rushing to reshore or backshore their operations.

So the key question today is – how important is outsourcing going to be in the scheme of things to come? With globalization on a massive scale thanks to the Internet and other technologically innovative forms of communication, is it possible to dismiss this phenomenon which took the world by storm just a decade or so ago? And is it viable now for organizations to bring back all their overseas operations and still operate profitably?

The reason why outsourcing took off so swiftly and enjoyed such great success is not just because of the low cost of services in developing nations like India which boast a well educated population, but also because the quality of services delivered more often than not exceeded expectations, and because over a period of time, the initial hiccups gave way to operations that were smooth and satisfactory. Of course, the odd problem surfaced every now and then, but then, that’s to be expected even with onshore operations.

So yes, while a few companies are moving lock, stock and barrel back home, there are many more who are still sticking it out; and it’s not too premature to hazard a guess that outsourcing will continue to enjoy its day in the sun, even if the rays are not as bright as they used to be.

This guest post is contributed by Chris Jacobson who writes on the topic of Criminal Justice Degree Online . Chris can be reached at his email id: chris.jacobson7-AT-gmail-Dot-com

Plenty of career opportunities in LPO firms

2011-03-24T15:40:00.002+05:30

Guest article (as it appeared in Deccan Herald)

Legal process outsourcing (LPO) industry has left its pangs of dithering and clarification and reached the stage where its feet are firmly grounded in the outsourcing domain and is charged for an aggressive expansion.

Valuenotes report suggests that the Indian LPO market will be worth more than USD $1bn by 2014. The economy saw the industry strengthening even at the times of global recession where for mature and stable providers of LPO it meant more business with Valuenotes estimating LPO revenues (from India alone) to be USD 370 million for 2009.

This exponential growth is owing to increasing pressure on businesses to boost capacity, lower costs and devise efficient ways to deliver services.

For markets such as India, industry experts opine that since developed markets are turning extremely volatile the former are fast emerging as better investment destinations. This creates a big pool of opportunities for young lawyers in India as they stand to benefit not only in the domain of experience by getting a chance to do quality and multijurisdictional legal work but also finding opportunity to take up a business manager’s role as they move up the corporate ladder, which in case of a conventional lawyer is not a predictable career progression.

Litigation or work at law firms in India is associated with initial years of relentless struggle wherein the return on investment of time and money is slow.

Platform for lawyer

LPO companies on the other hand provide a platform that not only enriches a lawyer with global exposure and knowledge of multiple jurisdictions but also give them the experience to build and manage teams in a relatively short span of time. Employees’ development in such corporations becomes intrinsically linked with the growth of the corporation. Example of one such legal service provider is CPA Global where Succeeding together is one of their corporate values. To actively help its employees succeed, the company inculcates the culture of leadership at all levels. Lawyers gain in-depth knowledge of both nitty-gritty’s of law and dynamics of business owing to the international business environment provided in its functioning. Established LPO companies such as CPA Global have opened avenues to build long-term career for both fresh and experienced lawyers. A wide variety of services with various levels of complexity has today become the USP for the industry from the work spanning across Legal Research, Contract Solutions, Transaction Support to Document Review.

Opportunities galore

Opportunities such as these are now attracting many young yet experienced lawyers to join LPOs. Lawyers with LLM from international universities equipped with work experience in a law firm as well as some years in private practice choose to work for leading LPOs.

One of them said and I quote - Although legal profession offers a plethora of opportunities, the LPO industry offers a completely new avenue wherein a legal professional not only develops as a lawyer but also is presented with an administrative role.

Delving with business along with the legal nuances gives a bigger and intrinsic perspective to the legal scenario involved in global transactions. Further, it is a multi faced role which keeps fleeting from one client to another and never gets to be monotonous. Along with vast array of knowledge at the work place, the work life balance also forms a pivotal point for a bulk of lawyers transitioning to the outsourcing industry. The outsourcing industry provides more flexibility and a better platform to deliver than rigid and hectic schedules of a legal firm. A brand like CPA Global with some of the biggest names in the global business being its dedicated clients, offers the perfect platform to the legal fraternity to achieve the pinnacle of success in the outsourcing industry.

In the current scenario LPO industry is moving towards consolidation with recent mergers and acquisitions being indicative of this growth. This change is guided by the move to capture the global legal market share where LPO in India, according to some industry experts, alone is expected to reach USD $1bn by 2014, which is less than 1% of global law industry. Although this appears to be a small portion of the pie but undeniably is indicative of the huge potential of legal outsourcing and a glimpse of exciting times ahead.

Authored by Anand Sharma, CFO and Head of Management Services, CPA Global.

CPA Global named in Global Outsourcing 100 for third year running

2011-03-04T12:10:00.001+05:30

Leading legal services outsourcing company CPA Global has been named in the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals' (IAOP) Global Outsourcing 100for the third year running – the only pure-play LSO provider to have achieved such distinction.

The prestigious top 100 listing covers the leading players in all disciplines of outsourcing, including the largest IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) companies. Companies selected for the Global Outsourcing 100 undergo a rigorously judged application process that assesses four critical characteristics: size and growth, customer references, organisational competencies, and management capabilities.

Leah Cooper, CPA Global's Director, Legal Services Outsourcing, said: “We are honoured to have been selected for this important industry listing for a third year in a row. Our position as the only pure-play LSO provider in the 2011 Global Outsourcing 100 establishes CPA Global as a true industry leader. Legal services outsourcing is a fast emerging sector and this high level recognition by the IAOP underlines the key role that CPA Global is playing in developing the sector.”

Michael Corbett, IAOP Chairman and chair of the judges’ panel, said: “Congratulations to CPA Global. Being named in the Global Outsourcing 100 is a great achievement, especially given the strong competition from outsourcing providers in both well established and newly emerging sectors. The companies on The Global Outsourcing Outsourcing 100 are proven leaders and rising stars. They are the companies you want to partner with to achieve success and better outsourcing outcomes.”

Note: * CPA Global defines 'pure-play legal services outsourcing provider' as a company whose sole outsourcing focus is in legal services rather than more general IT and business process outsourcing, etc.

About CPA Global
CPA Global is the world's leading provider of legal services outsourcing, including document review, transaction support, contract solutions, legal research, and intellectual property (IP). With offices across Europe, the United States, Asia and the Pacific, CPA Global supports many of the world’s best known corporations and law firms with a diverse set of legal and IP specific requirements, helping them to realise value by managing risk, cost and capacity.

Founded in Jersey, Channel Islands in 1969, CPA Global today employs 1,500 people, serving clients’ needs in over 100 countries. CPA Global has offices in key city locations such as London, Paris, Munich, Washington DC, Sydney, Hong Kong and New Delhi; and has strategic partnerships covering a number of other important markets, including Japan and Korea. The company has extensive operations in India, with some 800 people in two state-of-the-art legal services delivery centres in the Noida and Gurgaon districts of Delhi. The company's focus on quality and security in its Indian legal services outsourcing business is underlined by its certifications in ISO 9001 for operational quality and ISO27001 for IT security. For further information visit: www.cpaglobal.com or contact:

United Kingdom: Steve Clark +44 (0)20 7549 5504, sclark@cpaglobal.com
Victoria Knowles +44 (0)20 7549 4585, vknowles@cpaglobal.com
United States: Julie Mandell +1 571-227-7025, jmandell@cpaglobal.com

About IAOP
The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals® (IAOP®) is the global, standard-setting organisation and advocate for the outsourcing profession. With more than 110,000 members and affiliates worldwide, IAOP helps companies increase their outsourcing success rate, improve their outsourcing ROI, and expand the opportunities for outsourcing across their businesses. To learn more, visit http://www.iaop.org or contact:

Kimberly Maneeley, IAOP Director, Marketing & Communications
+1 845-452-0600, ext. 104, kim.maneeley@iaop.org

About The Global Outsourcing 100
The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals® (IAOP®) is in its sixth year of compiling its annual ranking of the world’s best outsourcing service providers and advisors – The Global Outsourcing 100. As part of The Global Outsourcing 100, IAOP also introduced a new list in 2009, The World's Best Outsourcing Advisors.

The Global Outsourcing 100 and its sub-lists are essential references for companies seeking new and expanded relationships with the best companies in the industry. The lists include companies from around the world that provide the full spectrum of outsourcing services — not just information technology and business process outsourcing, but also legal services, facility services, real estate and capital asset management, manufacturing and logistics.

Ireland to be the next stop for legal outsourcing . . .

2011-03-04T11:58:00.001+05:30

In an article written by Russell Smith an interesting development has to come to fore. Legal outsourcing is recently been seen having a new base in Ireland. To quote him “A flurry of reports indicate that UK mega law firms Allen & Overy and Herbert Smith both are setting up legal support offices in formerly war-torn Belfast in the coming months. The outsourced jobs will include not only hundreds of back-office clerical positions, but also over 75 fee-earning legal jobs.”

Does this mean a precursor to the legal outsourcing market in India? Is the Indian market capable to handle this situation keeping in mind that the Irish government is going out of its way to support the industry? I agree with Russell when he says that a lot would be clear when Indian government will reveal its decision regarding the IT-enabled services next month.

Read more to know his opinion.

Executive Summary: 12 Ways Offshore Legal Outsourcing Could Shake Up the Law World in the New Decade

2011-01-19T15:45:00.003+05:30

Many good points already have been made about what offshore legal outsourcing (or legal process outsourcing/LPO) has achieved in 2010, and what it is likely to contribute in 2011. But this is not just a new year; it's a new decade. This second decade of the 21st century is the one in which the legal world, as we know it, might be turned upside down. Along with related factors, offshore legal outsourcing is likely to continue to be among the leaders of the law revolution. Let us count the ways:

1. Meritocracy Beats Aristocracy

In the new, client-centric legal world, legal services providers can no longer rely on privileged positions. They can no longer depend on unwavering acceptance of the old model, which Cisco General Counsel Mark Chandler famously described as "the last vestige of the medieval guild system to survive into the 21st century." Lawyers and law firms must deliver value. That's what high-quality, offshore legal outsourcing is all about. This is the number one reason why the LPO (legal process outsourcing) sector is likely to continue to boom throughout the new decade.

2. Change is happening in the East as Much as in the West

Much has been written about the dramatic upheaval in the US and UK legal worlds. But just as rapidly as the Western legal market is changing so is the legal world in India. National law schools are proliferating, skill sets are improving, business-oriented metrics are beginning to prevail, and India's "demographic dividend" is in full effect.

3. The New Tort Reform

Now that high-profile U.S. law suits have been defeated with the use of high-end, offshore legal outsourcing, the corporate world is just beginning to realize that the best response to bogus claims is not a costly settlement payout, but instead, a cost-effective defense.

4. Capital Funding of Litigation

The new development of third-party funding of plaintiffs' litigation, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars provided by seemingly unlikely investors such as Citigroup, means that corporations are under even more pressure to reduce their legal costs. Offshore legal outsourcing answers not only them but also to the claims investors, who want to maximize their returns on worthwhile cases, rather than see most of their money go to legal fees.

5. The Billable Hour Bites the Dust

Value-based, flat-fee or fixed-fee billing already is beginning to turn the legal world upside down. Instead of trying to maximize hours and costs, law firms that practice alternative billing, voluntarily or otherwise, are now trying to minimize those same hours and costs. Under that scenario, offshore legal outsourcing is not a dangerous threat to law firms, but instead a great opportunity.

6. Unintended Effects of Regulatory Reform

The financial regulations that arose from the lack of transparency and oversight blamed for the recent recession that shook the core of the Western economy, together with the regulations contained in the new U.S. healthcare legislation, have created vast new compliance obligations for U.S. corporations, all of which cry out for cost-effective, offshore legal solutions.

7. "Legal Trauma Units" Level the Playing Field

As the ABA Ethics Commission astutely recognized, offshore legal outsourcing can be a blessing to overwork and out-gunned solo practitioners and small law firms. LPO providers are acting as "legal trauma units" for such lawyers, expertly handling their deadline emergencies, leveling the playing field for them, magnifying their strength and allowing them to not only meet difficult deadlines, but even run circles around the client-required, "lean staffing" of large law firms.

8. Offshore Beats Nearshore

While some companies reportedly are thrilled to pay $100-200 per hour for "nearshore" or onshore U.S. contract attorneys, and although this trend may thrive for some time in contrast to the $300-500 per hour that "BigLaw" firms charge for similar work, the nearshore/onshore providers will continue to have serious competitive trouble in the face of the reality that very high-quality, more reliable alternatives are available offshore for $20-40 per hour, or better yet, for inexpensive flat fees.

9. The Death of the "They're Taking our Jobs" Myth

The mostly untapped market for affordable legal services (a phrase now widely seen as an oxymoron) is vast. At some point, it will become apparent to the legal and corporate worlds that when offshore legal outsourcing allows otherwise unaffordable court cases to be opposed or prosecuted, and deals to be done, most of which require Western lawyers to supervise and implement, the amount of work for Western lawyers will go up, not down.

10. More Proliferation than Consolidation

Some experts talk, perhaps wishfully at times, about the supposedly upcoming "consolidation" of the LPO industry. In fact, there has been much more proliferation than consolidation. With the one exception of the acquisition of LawScribe by UnitedLex, it seems that so far there has not been a single example of one LPO buying or merging with another. Of course, several legal process outsourcing providers have disappeared entirely (some leaving their old websites intact for posterity, like electronic tombstones), but for every company that has gone under, another three or so have cropped up. The industry has gone from 15 companies in 2005, to over 200 today, and that trend will only increase, as offshore legal outsourcing becomes more popular. This can be a very good thing, not just a bad thing, to the extent that boutique and other niche LPOs emerge to satisfy client needs that go beyond the currently dominant trend of high-volume document coding.

11. Western Lawyers Switch to Football

Instead of complaining about the supposed loss of jobs, forward-thinking Western lawyers are realizing that offshore legal outsourcing provides them with an opportunity, and maybe even a necessity, of moving up the value chain. Whether they are litigators or transactional lawyers, they have the opportunity to focus on becoming quarterbacks or team coaches, or as Jordan Furlong puts it, "solutions managers." That's what clients want from them the most. As for young associates, they will be trained to negotiate deals, appear in court, supervise offshore providers, and provide legal advice. None of those tasks can be done best (or in some cases, at all) by foreign lawyers. All of those roles provide an opportunity for growth, not decline, at least on the part of modern law firms that are willing to embrace the future, rather than resist it.

12. The Future May Belong to the "Just Crazy Enough"

In a now-famous New York Times article, business journalist David Segal reported on the surprising fact that many venture capital funds deliberately look for entrepreneurs who have a mental disorder. The investors are looking for potential business leaders who are "just manic enough" or "crazy enough." In the LPO field, about 6 years ago, Indian providers like Mindcrest, Lexadigm, Quislex, Pangea3 and others were "just crazy enough" to provide document review and other services that most Western companies and law firms would never imagine sending overseas. Now, the sending of document work to India is routine. Today, arguably "crazy" legal outsourcing entrepreneurs and other LPO leaders are setting their sights on the highest-value and highest profit-margin mother lode, which is legal research and legal drafting. It is in those areas that offshore legal outsourcing is likely to make its greatest and most profitable mark.

For the entire article please click here.

Written by Russell Smith

Fonterion predicts more emphasis on onshoring

2010-12-20T10:18:00.001+05:30

International consulting firm for outsourced legal services has come out with its top 10 list of predictions for LPO domain.

The report emphasize on the already known facts like LPO to be the answer to all cost effective questions and technology being the USP of the offshoring proposition. However, the new facets that have emerged from this report are the ones which I think would govern the next year. For example the shift in focus to onshore delivery centers. The recent acquisition by Thomson Reuters of Pangea3 is one such example which can pave the way for further similar kind of developments. Another noteworthy finding is the increasing public acknowledgement. It is the acceptance that will propel growth for the entire industry.

To read full report, please click on the link. For a brief synopsis read …

How will 2011 spell out for LPO business?

2010-12-10T15:04:00.001+05:30

The LPO Program today released its forecast of the 2011 LPO market showing high growth in all areas of the legal community. The main user of LPO continues to be Corporate Law Departments, who are forecast to add $129m of spending in 2011. Law firms are shaking off traditional caution and are fuelling 41% of the projected growth. On these forecasts, it is expected that at least 9 high profile deals will be announced by law firms in the next 12 months.

Read more . . .

UnitedLex Strengthens Market Position with Strategic Acquisition of LawScribe

2010-12-08T09:57:00.000+05:30

UnitedLex, a global full service provider of technology powered legal & business solutions, announced that it has successfully completed the acquisition of LawScribe. With LawScribe's deep domain capabilities and tradition of thought leadership, UnitedLex will expand its insight and applications to reduce costs and solve complex legal & business challenges."UnitedLex's industry leading technology and long standing commitment to multi-shore delivery made our decision to join them an easy one," said Kunoor Chopra, President and CEO of LawScribe.

Corporate clients embrace outsourcing

2010-11-29T09:35:00.000+05:30

A by-lined article from Leah Cooper discusses how the legal profession is on the cusp of unprecedented change, and that LSO (and CPA Global in particular) is at the forefront of that change. The piece highlights growth in new business (including our ongoing discussions with Australian law firm Blake Dawson), how LSO is attracting interest from outside investors as well as high-level legal professionals who see the sector as an exciting career alternative, and the results of recent market research on the perceptions of LSO, commissioned by CPA Global.

Read more . . .

Boon time for Indian lawyers

2010-11-24T09:25:00.001+05:30

A special feature on aggressive hiring trends in LPO sector, entitled 'LPOs catch Indian lawyers' appeared in The Financial Express. This industry trend piece talks in detail about Indian lawyers and path breaking growth planned by the industry.

LPO in India is looking forward in expanding its presence in the outsourcing sector owing to which big names like CPA Global, United Lex, and Infosys are into major hiring spree especially for the lawyers. This development does not alone mean profit for the business but is also a boon time for law graduates and lawyers. They now have an option to skip the drudgery and hardship, which they earlier spent at courts practicing, move directly to an LPO company and get the benefits of corporate culture.

The article elaborates recent LPO expansion by quoting Anand Sharma, CFO and Head of Management Services at CPA Global, “We will hire 400 lawyers in India by the end of this year. Our global headcount will be 7500 in five years. We expect 75% of it to be in India,” says Anand Sharma, CFO and head, management services at CPA Global. The company’s 40% hiring would constitute laterals with 12-15 years experience and the remaining 60% would be freshers.”

Read more . . .

Will Philippines challenge India as the next LPO destination?

2010-11-23T11:03:00.000+05:30

Infosys recent announcement of expanding its legal outsourcing operations to Manila have made many question about cost effectiveness of this new destination. Philippines like India have a legal system that is similar to US. Also its talent pool is English speaking and is offering its services at a pittance when compared with US lawyers. So does this mean that LPO industry in India is under threat?

India LPO domain has now reached a point where they have established a strong hold not only in terms of doing quality work but also in improvising the process of doing it. Certification such as ISO 9001:2008 testify the quality while the increasing level of complexity of work meted out to some of the LPO units talk about the skill workforce present in India. Though Philippines has a similar law infrastructure India on the other hand has a huge talent pool which is already on its path of growing the LPO sector.

Thomson Reuters has acquired one of India’s largest pure play LPO companies Pangea3

2010-11-22T10:37:00.003+05:30

The acquisition price would be in the range of $35 to 40m (Rs 157 to 200 crore) as reported by Business Standard and citing unnamed sources.

The deal was announced by Thomson Reuters but did not disclose a deal value. Its legal division’s president and chief executive officer said in a press release that legal outsourcing added a vital strategic complement to the company’s portfolio of “specialised information and workflow solutions”, and would be the key to helping law firms and corporate legal departments be more “responsive and cost-effective”.
"Pangea3 is true to our mission to help the legal system perform better, every day, worldwide; we will now bring to the legal marketplace a responsive, high-quality, transformative resource for a broad range of legal support work,” he added in the statement.

Pangea3 declined to comment. Pangea3 and Thomson Reuters told Business Standard that they did not comment on speculation although neither denied the news.

Full article at http://www.legallyindia.com/201011181531/Legal-Process-Outsourcing-LPO/breaking-thomson-reuters-to-acquire-lpo-pangea3-for-up-to-40m-strategic-buy

Survey on the LPO industry

2010-11-22T10:30:00.002+05:30

Hello readers,

The LPO industry, as you all are aware, has in recent times seen a lot of changes in the mindset as well as the work done by it. Ravi Shankar, Harvard Law graduate, is administering a survey to study business fundamentals of the LPO industry in India at large. The questionnaire is addressed to operational managers in the Indian. If you are interested please contact Ravi Shankar at rshankar@jd10.law.harvard.edu .

Have a nice day.

Guest article:Why Outsourcing E-discovery should be part of your business strategy

2010-10-28T09:19:00.002+05:30

Outsourcing e-discovery and information management services is no longer something businesses can ignore. E-discovery and information management services are rapidly becoming critical, highly-discussed topics in board meetings across the globe. Developing a strategy for outsourcing them is a key to the success of today’s modern, Internet-enabled enterprises.

As the world begins to see more and more bogus tort claims, frivolous lawsuits, and increasing amounts of civil litigation in general, the process of discovery, or the process of obtaining documents, interrogations, and other evidence from opposing parties before trial, during such litigation proceedings becomes increasingly cumbersome and costly to obtain. The discovery process was difficult to begin with before the Internet-era; but now with the introduction of massive amounts of computer-based data such as emails, instant messages, and other intangible data stored in electronic format the discovery process becomes even more difficult to complete. This new form of discovery, known as e-discovery, is not just more complicated than its traditional predecessor due to the existence of larger amounts of data in formats far less tangible than paper.

The e-discovery process is further hindered due to a larger array of personnel involved in the process of discovering relevant, electronically-based data. Lawyers and forensic investigators, who are unfamiliar with the technological aspects of creating, maintaining, preserving, and deleting electronically-based data, must cooperate during the e-discovery process with IT professionals (IT managers, database administrators, network administrators, etc.), all of whom are generally unfamiliar with the law. This clash often results in delays, misunderstandings, or, even worse, data corruption or even outright data loss.

The tasks of managing a company’s data and, in the event civil litigation arises, e-discovery are peripheral tasks not directly related the company’s core goals. Just like the duties involved with payroll processing have been successfully delegated to outside specialist firms, outsourcing e-discovery and information management services are gradually taking hold amongst businesses worldwide. Despite fears from the opposition, outsourcing these tasks is proven to be efficient, cost-effective, and safe.

Firms specializing in e-discovery outsourcing have professional staff trained in tasks specific to the discovery process and how it is conducted in today’s electronic document era. Outsourcing these tasks frees corporate attorneys from these burdens so that they can focus on tasks more suited to them. Instead of wasting time on the “grunt work” of ploughing through boxes of digital tape backups or data mining through hundreds of gigabytes of archived receipts, attorneys can focus more on clients and business development efforts.

When a corporation’s legal department teams up with an e-discovery outsourcing company located in another country, the potential to speed up the process and meet previously impossible deadlines increases dramatically, as attorneys can take advantage of time differences between their offices and that of the outsourcing company in order to continuously work on a project non-stop, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Outsourcing e-discovery helps prevent companies from getting “overcharged and overlawyered” by unscrupulous attorneys and con artists alike who prey upon management fears that pursuing a proper legal defence will always be more expensive than a settlement. With outsourcing e-discovery becoming a viable, cost-efficient alternative to expensive settlements, companies can re-invest the money otherwise lost on these settlements into pursuing their core goals. This is a win-win situation for the company, their customers, and their containing economies as well.

Outsourcing information management services benefits a company in similar and complementary ways, in the sense that an outsource firm specializing in information management can not only increase efficiency in handling a firm’s data, but will help said firm’s attorneys be more effective with retrieving and processing discoverable electronic data.

Opponents to such outsourcing claim it is unprofessional and unethical to allow so-called “non-lawyers” to practice law. They claim that outsourcing dilutes the quality of discoverable documents as the task of document identification, preservation, and collection are not conducted by a company’s own legal staff. Such claims are simply untrue. Allowing an outsourcing company to handle specific tasks under guidance is no different in this respect than hiring paralegals or law student apprentices. It has even been ruled that outsourcing is acceptable as long as an attorney properly supervises their work. As with anything that an attorney must delegate to others, he or she must take caution and maintain an awareness for issues relating e-document custody and control, privilege and confidentiality of e-documents, e-document security, and other various legal and ethical considerations.

Regardless of the opposition, outsourcing of e-discovery and information management services is becoming increasingly popular. As it becomes more and more difficult to compete against one’s competitors, finding a way to increase efficiency and reduce costs anyway possible is a goal that is here to stay. Outsourcing tasks that are not directly related to an enterprise’s core pursuits has proven effective for decades in matters such as payroll processing, supply chain management, and even IT matters. The “Electronic Revolution” has not only allowed this to happen but has encouraged its growth amongst companies in every industry imaginable. It’s not hard to see it was only a matter of time before outsourcing arrived in the legal department.

Steven Rosen is a freelance writer and blogger for Ledjit Consulting, a Montreal-based e-discovery and information management consulting firm.

Time to open your eyes to legal outsourcing

2010-08-16T22:25:00.000+05:30

Russell Smith in his article “ The Toothpaste is out of the tube” shares his own experience regarding the legal out sourcing industry in India. He in his article not only brings forth the benefits accrued by the Western clients but also demythifies the statement that legal outsourcing is taking away the jobs of the UK and US lawyers. He brings forth the fact that by outsourcing litigation work many legal cases have been dismissed at the court of law rather than being settled. This according to him has happened only “because of the successful teamwork among attorneys in US and in India”. He uses the term “benign tort reform” to address the phenomenon wherein “defendants facing bogus or inflated tort claims are choosing to litigate and win.” This has been possible only from the existence of legal outsourcing firms in countries such as India and Philippines which has led to the usage of money, otherwise being given for payouts, to go back to the U.S. economy.

Legal outsourcing industry cannot be ignored now. It’s here to stay. The question is not on its existence but on the existence of those who don’t embrace it.

India knocking the Western legal market

2010-08-16T21:41:00.002+05:30

In this brilliantly written article the author explores the Western side of the world with respect to global legal services outsourcing industry. The lawyers from US and UK lawyers are now showing ardent desire to work with Indian legal outsourcing companies. It’s the opportunity to manage big teams and built business that is giving them a rush.

Not only big corporations but also law firms such as Clifford Chance have now realized the benefits of outsourcing the routine legal work to destinations like India, Philippines and now Israel. Law firms in India to attract Western clients are hiring experienced lawyers from US & UK so that adherence to quality and understanding of the client requirements can be done in a better way.

It’s just a matter of time when there is going to be an exodus of Western lawyers to Indian legal outsourcing business and industry pundits have already started seeing the signs of it happening.

Integreon signs a breakthrough deal

2010-05-23T21:43:00.000+05:30

Integreon has signed a 10-year US$852 million outsourcing agreement with CMS Cameron McKenna. The transaction covers accounting, human resources, marketing, training and IT. This deal is one of the biggest deals that have come after the Rio Tinto–CPA Global partnership. Such developments mark the growth of the legal outsourcing domain as well as receptivity of corporations and law firms to the idea of outsourcing legal work.

Press Release: CPA Global one of biggest climbers in Global Outsourcing 100 - Continues to achieve highest position of any pure-play

2010-05-03T09:25:00.001+05:30

CPA Global has achieved the highest position of any pure-play legal services outsourcing provider* in the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals’ (IAOP) Global Outsourcing 100 for the second year running.

CPA Global was also one of the fastest climbers in the prestigious top 100 listing - which covers the leading players in all disciplines of outsourcing, including the largest IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) companies. Amongst this diverse group, CPA Global rose to 42nd place this year from 60th in 2009.

Companies selected for the Global Outsourcing 100 are included and ranked based on quality following a rigorously judged application process that examines multiple criteria. They are assessed on four critical characteristics: size and growth, customer references, organisational competencies, and management capabilities.

Leah Cooper, CPA Global’s Head of Legal Services Outsourcing, said: “LSO is growing rapidly and bringing significant change to the legal services sector. Our impressive rise up the IAOP rankings reinforces CPA Global’s leadership position as well as increasing industry appreciation of the benefits of LSO. I am delighted by our strong showing in this important listing as it reflects positively on the quality of service we provide and our levels of customer satisfaction.”

Michael Corbett, chairman of the Global Outsourcing 100 judges panel, commented: “Being named in the Global Outsourcing 100 is a great achievement, particularly given the strong competition from such a diverse range of outsourcing providers in both well established and newly emerging sectors. CPA Global should be proud of gaining recognition of their excellence in outsourcing, and being one of the biggest climbers this year.”

CPA Global was also identified in the 2010 Global Outsourcing 100 list as one of the top ten providers to the pharmaceutical sector and one of the top 20 providers to the technology sector.

CPA Global’s inclusion in the IAOP rankings follows its success in the Brown & Wilson Group Black Book of Outsourcing in 2009, where it achieved more first place ‘quality’ rankings than any other LSO provider, including client relationships, outsourcing implementation, scalability and adaptability, and ‘marginal value adds’, which rates how well predicted cost savings are delivered. CPA Global was also recognised last year by the UK’s National Outsourcing Association for its innovative work with Rio Tinto, saving the mining company more than 20% of its legal spend.

Note: * CPA Global defines ‘pure-play legal services outsourcing provider’ as a company whose sole outsourcing focus is in legal services rather than more general IT and business process outsourcing, etc.

Media Contacts

CPA Global
UK: Steve Clark +44 (0)1784 224 351, sclark@cpaglobal.com
Rob Coveney +44 (0)1784 224 557, rcoveney@cpaglobal.com
US: Julie Mandell +1 (571) 227-7025, jmandell@cpaglobal.com

IAOP
Kimberly Maneeley +1.845.452.0600, ext. 104,
kim.maneeley@outsourcingprofessional.org

About CPA Global
CPA Global is the world's leading provider of legal services outsourcing, including document review, transaction support, contract solutions, legal research, and intellectual property (IP). With offices across Europe, the United States, Asia and the Pacific, CPA Global supports many of the world’s best known corporations and law firms with a diverse set of legal and IP specific requirements, helping them to realise value by managing risk, cost and capacity.

Founded in Jersey, Channel Islands in 1969, CPA Global today employs around 1,500 people in 15 offices in ten countries, serving clients’ needs in over 100 countries. CPA Global has offices in key city locations such as London, Paris, Munich, Washington DC, Sydney, Hong Kong and New Delhi; and has strategic partnerships covering a number of other important markets, including Japan and Korea. The company has extensive operations in India, with some 650 people in two state-of-the-art legal services delivery centres in the Noida and Gurgaon districts of Delhi. The company's focus on quality and security in its Indian legal services outsourcing business is underlined by its certifications in ISO 9001 for operational quality and ISO27001 for IT security.

For further information visit: www.cpaglobal.com

About IAOP
The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals® (IAOP®) is the global, standard-setting organisation and advocate for the outsourcing profession. With more than 100,000 members and affiliates worldwide, IAOP helps companies increase their outsourcing success rate, improve their outsourcing ROI, and expand the opportunities for outsourcing across their businesses. To learn more, visit www.outsourcingprofessional.org.

About The Global Outsourcing 100
The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals® (IAOP®) is in its fifth year of compiling its annual ranking of the world’s best outsourcing service providers and advisors – The Global Outsourcing 100.
The Global Outsourcing 100 and its sub-lists are essential references for companies seeking new and expanded relationships with the best companies in the industry. The lists include companies from around the world that provide the full spectrum of outsourcing services — not just information technology and business process outsourcing, but also facility services, real estate and capital asset management, manufacturing and logistics. They include not only today’s leaders, but tomorrow’s rising stars.

LPO Company achieves one more milestone for its client

2010-04-15T17:37:00.000+05:30

SDD Global Solutions, the India arm of Channel 4’s U.S. counsel, SmithDehn LLP, achieved a major feat by defeating a libel case involving a plaintiff who sought $800,000 dollars in damages, all allegedly due to the inclusion of her name in a comedy routine. Sanjay Bhatia, SDD Global’s Head of Operations, commented that “this is a case where outsourcing created more work in the US, rather than less. Because our team made the defense affordable, US lawyers were able to do the things in the US that they do best there, such as strategizing, supervising, editing, and appearing in court. The implications of this case are huge. With legal outsourcing, baseless lawsuits can be defeated on their merits, instead of settled simply out of fear of legal fees.” Read more to know about the case and how SDD Global provided strategic support in bringing forth a cost effective and innovative win for Channel 4.

BT signs new deal to outsource work to UnitedLex

2010-03-30T09:08:00.000+05:30

UnitedLex team will handle commercial contracting and antitrust regulation work for BT's offices in the UK, the US, India, Singapore and Hong Kong. The team will be based in Gurgaon, India.

BT Global Services general counsel David Eveleigh said: "Our existing Gurgaon-based in-house team delivering legal support services has performed extremely well, but the time is right for us to transition the work and our people to an established legal process outsourcer, which can offer industry best practices and provide global scalability."

Read more to know the details of the deal.

Legal service outsourcing - The next 'it' thing

2010-02-25T16:30:00.004+05:30

In an amazingly well written article in Law Gazette, James Dean tries to break the myth surrounding the working conditions in LPO companies and present the real picture of growth, dynamic work culture and synchronisation of technology and skill expertise.

James takes the reader through his journey of one of the best legal service outsourcing units - CPA Global - and puts forth the point of view of its people. Read more to know the pace of growth of the legal outsourcing industry, expansion plans of CPA Global and how people especially lawyers have embraced this industry.

Lawyers soon to become expert project managers

2010-02-18T11:17:00.001+05:30

In an article, which appeared in Hilderbrandt, a very interesting question was put forth before the readers. The question is related to the current discussions on having alternative pricing, which is now challenging the billable hour. The author in an attempt to go to the root cause of the problem, which is to understand COSTS, enters in the labyrinth of questions. The most basic one being that what has led to doubling of costs by the lawyers in recent few years. “Is it because there was an added complication one time or was the job just poorly managed? If it’s the latter, is it possible to make someone (a lawyer) a good project manager?”

Lawyers have no doubt in recent years have understood the mechanics of globalization and economics. They have also understood that budgetary issues now no more surface in the job description of financial experts alone. It is now the time to get into legal project management as well. This is one area where niche legal services outsourcing firms can provide the much needed exposure and experience. The huge ambit of work dealt by such firms gives the lawyers working their opportunities to learn and execute different principles of legal project management. There are multiple success stories in such companies where an individual who joined in as a legal analyst have in short span of time and owing to challenging nature of work has become a leader of big teams of lawyers and paralegals.

Gradually the mindset regarding LPO units is changing among the masses. They now comprehend the multi-dimensionality of work done in big LPO companies such as CPA Global and are eager to carve their career in such organizations.

Press Release: Intermediate Capital Group acquires significant stake in CPA Global

2010-02-16T22:49:00.001+05:30

Legal services firm set for strong growth as outsourcing sector takes off

Intermediate Capital Group (“ICG”), a leading independent investor and fund manager, announces that it has acquired a significant minority stake in legal services firm CPA Global, investing alongside the company’s senior management team and the founding shareholders.

The acquisition has received the required approvals from CPA Global shareholders as well as the Jersey courts, which sanctioned a new Scheme of Arrangement that came into effect today. The terms of the transaction are not disclosed.

Founded in Jersey in 1969, originally to manage patent renewals, CPA Global has expanded over the years to become a multinational company that is the clear market leader in the global intellectual property (IP) services market and one of the world's leading providers of broader legal services outsourcing, including litigation support, document review and contract management. The legal services outsourcing sector is expected to grow rapidly over the next few years, with estimates of the potential market value in the tens of billions of dollars.

CPA Global’s Chief Executive Officer, Peter Sewell, said: “This is a very exciting time for CPA Global and everyone involved in the company. It represents the next stage in our evolution from an IP partnership handling patent renewals into a global leader in IP and legal services outsourcing. Our growth prospects in the years ahead are the strongest we’ve ever seen as we continue to develop our IP services and software businesses with an expanded range of products and services, while aggressively pursuing our diversification into the wider legal services sector. This sector is really taking off as corporate clients are increasingly turning to outsourcing providers for alternative, more cost effective ways of managing their legal work. CPA Global is already recognised as a pacesetter in legal outsourcing, working with many major international corporations around the world, and, with ICG’s backing and support, we will be even better positioned to take advantage of the opportunities ahead.”
Piers Millar, Head of ICG Minority Partners, said: “Peter and the management team have built a fantastic business over the past decade gaining market share and developing new business areas. We believe CPA Global has a very exciting future and we are really delighted to be supporting them in their ongoing development.”
CPA Global was advised by BDO Corporate Finance. ICG was advised by HSBC and Close Brothers.

For further information, please contact:
CPA Global
Steve Clark +44 (0)20 7549 0679, sclark@cpaglobal.com
Rob Coveney +44 (0)20 7549 5505, rcoveney@cpaglobal.com
ICG
Media
Amanda Fong +44 (0) 20 7448 4156, amanda.fong@icgplc.com
Analyst / Investor enquiries
Jean-Christophe Rey +44 (0) 20 7448 5876, jc.rey@icgplc.com
M: Communications:
Charlotte Kirkham or Tim Draper, M: Communications, +44 (0) 20 7920 2331, kirkham@mcomgroup.com, draper@mcomgroup.com

Further information on the companies:
About CPA Global
CPA Global is one of the world's leading providers of legal services outsourcing, including litigation support, document review, contract management, and intellectual property (IP) management and software services. With offices across Europe, the United States, Asia and the Pacific, CPA Global supports many of the world's best known corporations and law firms with a diverse set of legal and IP specific requirements.
Founded in Jersey, Channel Islands in 1969, CPA Global today employs more than 1,300 people in 15 offices in ten countries, including key city locations such as London, Paris, Munich, Washington DC, Sydney, Hong Kong and New Delhi; and has strategic partnerships covering a number of other important markets, including Japan and Korea. The company has a large and diverse list of clients: from major global corporations to small and medium-sized enterprises and innovation start-ups; and from the top international law firms to national and regional law and IP firms. Clients include leading Fortune 500 and FTSE companies, and two-thirds of the Global Lawyer 100.
CPA Global provides management services for its clients’ valuable IP Rights, such as patents, designs and trademarks, helping ensure that IP portfolios are protected, maintained and regularly reviewed in order to maximise value. Through its successful diversification strategy, the company has also established itself as a leader in the growing market for broader outsourced legal services, helping law firms and corporations to realise value by managing risk, cost and capacity on their behalf.
Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) is changing the legal services landscape and CPA Global is at the forefront of that change. In June 2009, CPA Global announced a landmark deal to supply outsourced legal services to global mining company Rio Tinto – a deal that was heralded by The Times as ‘ground-breaking’ and which attracted worldwide media coverage as well as the keen attention of the legal profession and international business community. CPA Global has firmly established itself as a leader in this sector, signing deals with a number of major international corporations; and investing heavily in building the business with two state-of-the-art facilities in New Delhi, now employing around 600 highly skilled staff, and three onshore delivery centres in the US.
CPA Global’s leadership position is underlined by its ranking as the world’s top intellectual property outsourcing provider and its second place overall for core legal services outsourcing in the Brown-Wilson Group’s Black Book of Outsourcing 2009. CPA Global also achieved more first place ‘quality’ ratings in this prestigious industry survey than any other provider. This follows CPA Global’s success in the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals 2009 Global Outsourcing 100 list, in which it achieved the highest position of any pure-play legal services outsourcing provider. For more information, visit: www.cpaglobal.com
About ICG
Founded in 1989 Intermediate Capital Group PLC (“ICG”) is a leading independent investor in and manager of mezzanine finance, minority equity and related assets with approximately £10 billion under management in proprietary capital and third party funds. ICG has a large and experienced investment team of investment executives operating from its head office in London and offices in Paris, Madrid, Stockholm, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Sydney and New York. Its stock (ticker symbol: ICP) is listed on the London Stock Exchange. Further information is available at: www.icgplc.com.

CPA Global achieves another milestone

2010-02-16T22:39:00.001+05:30

In a new rating model developed by ValueNotes, CPA Global has been recognized as a ‘pacesetter’ in legal services outsourcing industry.

The ValueNotes Sourcing Prism rates LPO providers in three areas: service maturity, sustainability and strategic intent. CPA Global was at the top position in all these categories.

Read more to know about the rating model and what made CPA Global get the top position amongst all the LPO players.

Legal Services outsourcing: Now mandatory to know

2010-02-16T21:09:00.000+05:30

In an article, which appeared in Financial Director, various facets of the emerging LPO business came forth.

The first major finding has been that the law firms have been quick in taking services provided by LPO companies rather than big businesses. However, the last year deal between CPA Global and mining giant, Rio Tinto, seems to herald a new chapter in the way legal outsourcing services are viewed.

The second big point is about cost saving. I have repeatedly mentioned in my articles that although cost saving is the major attraction, it is the Quality of the work which scores a point. “Cost is not the only cause of the renaissance in legal outsourcing; more clients are beginning to realize there are also opportunities to improve process efficiency and transparency, while still maintaining exemplary standards of quality and security” Rob Stichbury, CPA Global’s Director of Business Development.

It’s not only the client who needs to check the credentials as well as service provided by LPO companies, but also the service providers who need to know that process improvement, innovation, data security and consistent and strict adherence to Quality standards is what would help them in the present scenario of mushrooming LPO units.

Financial gains underlie LPO work

2010-01-19T11:29:00.000+05:30

Pricewaterhouse Coopers in its study has analyzed in detail the growth of LPO industry. They have found that legal services outsourcing provides the highest cost savings of 44% in comparison to other markets. The research also revealed that LPO services realise the highest profit margin for providers, with an average margin of 29%, ahead of IT (24%), finance and accounting (21%) and procurement (19%).

All these figures are indicative of the fact that legal outsourcing is the best avenue to provide cost saving, which in the present state of economic slowdown is the most coveted prize. The research also highlights the expansion plans of LPO service providers that points the increase in business meted out to them.

Lyceum invests in LPO domain

2009-11-26T12:15:00.000+05:30

Lyceum Capital, private equity house, has committed £25m to support Laureate Legal Services (LLS). The latter is a business process services group.

This deal provides further impetus to the legal outsourcing industry as it is now getting evident that businesses have realized the profitability of legal outsourcing and the need to diversify.

Allen & Overy embraces legal outsourcing

2009-11-26T10:46:00.001+05:30

Allen & Overy (A&O) becomes the first magic circle firm to benefit from the advantages of legal outsourcing. This step has been taken in an attempt to reduce their overheads and bring in cost effectivity. The firm has signed the deal with Integreon on a case-by-case basis. They would be outsourcing basic litigation document review work to India thus saving cost by 30-50 per cent.

With law firms getting into the outsourcing industry, it seems that initial apprehension regarding outsourcing has mitigated. Clifford Chance and Linklaters have both outsourced support functions. Many law firms after gauging the experience of law departments and pressure from clients have started exploring the option. The LPO service providers have with their breadth and depth of coverage; domain expertise; location advantage; data compliance with respect to regulatory standards; and management of business risks been able to change the skeptic mindset with respect to outsourcing legal services.

Mark Ross moves to Integreon

2009-11-19T09:46:00.000+05:30

Mark Ross has recently moved to Integreon as Vice President Legal Services. He was earlier the Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing at LawScribe. Mark Ross owing to his experience and acumen is considered as one of the thought leaders in the LPO industry. His write-ups at LawScribe blog have always been a source of interest to readers at large. This recent change in his profile is a move that would bring him into a more sales/consultative role at Integreon, while continuing in a thought leadership position. He would support Integreon’s global sales team in generating new legal outsourcing opportunities and revenue.

More law firms may join the outsourcing trend

2009-11-16T14:55:00.000+05:30

Travers Smith, Hammonds and Halliwells are the latest firms interested in cutting costs by sending either legal or back office support work to outsourcing companies.

These firms like Pinsent Masons and Eversheds are in the process of exploring several benefits attached with offshoring legal work. Eversheds is to save up to £2m a year through an outsourcing deal with Exigent. National duo Hammonds and Halliwells are at an earlier stage of debate but both firms are considering outsourcing options for both legal and back office functions, although they have yet to make any decisions about which work, if any, they will eventually send out. Hammonds expects to make a decision within the next year.

Needless to say that outsourcing in the legal domain is no more a nascent phenomena. Rather it has become one of those events which are hard to ignore.

Integreon acquires Grail Research

2009-11-16T14:53:00.000+05:30

Integreon, the back office outsourcing firm promoted by Philippines-based Ayala, acquired Grail Research, the captive research unit of the Monitor group for an undisclosed sum. “The acquisition gives us a delivery base in China and South Africa with further scope to expand there,” said Lokendra Tomar, COO, Asia Pacific, Integreon. The acquisition of Grail Research is its sixth so far. Its earlier acquisitions included three LPO firms and two KPO firms.

Mr Tomar said the $100-million company intends to raise money through a fresh issue of equity. A global private equity player will be used to fund more acquisitions in the KPO and LPO business, or to retire the debt it has taken to fund the Grail acquisition.

Language - bone of contention in delivering Quality

2009-10-07T10:03:00.001+05:30

LPOs are driven by various factors which includes, breadth and depth of coverage, domain expertise, location advantage, sales and marketing capabilities, data compliance with respect to regulatory standards (especially those defined by the US, Canada and EU) and management of business risks. All the aspects in unison help in making an LPO unit creditable in the world market. Among these aspects one that scores a point above all is the domain expertise which is inclusive of delivering consistently good quality work. India has in the outsourcing realm achieved major feats since the time of IT boom. India has 37% of the world’s shared of outsource services. This achievement is mainly because of the huge talent base trained in common law and the ability to scale up operations in a cost effective manner.

But in a recent blog post incorrect usage of English language was call into focus. Legal writing is archaic and very technical in nature. Since contract drafting and management requires an understanding of the nuances of the language in which it is written, a law degree doesn’t suffice the requirements of the job. The writer also specifies the reason as to why the incumbents are unable to match the standards accorded by the client. She says “Law in many of our local colleges is very often taught by professors who, while they are excellent with the subject itself, are from a vernacular background, with the result that their hold on the English language is tenuous at best. An LL.B. degree merely introduces its holder to legal vocabulary; to breed familiarity, one needs to be constantly reading and handling legal documents.”

It thus becomes imperative that LPO units make provisions of training in legal communications thus enabling the employees in making qualitative deliverables.

The Indian vs. Chinese legal outsourcing industry

2009-10-05T13:55:00.000+05:30

In a detailed analysis of legal outsourcing industry of the world’s two most prominent growing economies, Jalal Alamgir and Matthew Sullivan present the strengths of the Indian service sector over the Chinese set-up. The author attributes the strength to mainly four points. They are as follows:
1. Indians with an excellent command over English language and a legal system that is built upon the British system gives them an edge to their Chinese counterparts academically.
2. Investments made by the federal and state governments in the IT and BPO set-up. Currently most of the LPOs use the same infrastructure facilities.
3. The country that is able to address the two major concerns about information and data security will be able to garner maximum profits out of the business. With Chinese government remaining interested in controlling Internet activity, India will retain a big advantage.
4. Lastly, Indian government has taken major steps to showcase to the rest of the world of it being an investor’s paradise.

The cumulative effect of these points has made India have 37% of the world's share of outsourced services whereas China has managed to get only 10 %.

Outsourcing industry: another prediction of its future

2009-10-05T12:12:00.000+05:30

James Dunning, a legal consultant, in his article Legal Process Outsourcing – Dream or Disaster? examines two perspectives of the present economic condition. One side of the coin depicts legal outsourcing as being an option for the law firms to implement “progressive management strategy”, wherein the work outsourced gives the law firms more time to deal with critical issues rather than being involved in routine work. While the other side of the coin shows that big corporations are realizing the downside of subcontracting. For example Boeing company. The company had to eventually acquire its subcontractors owing to its persistent problems in the Dreamliner’s development.

With these two facets of the economic reality in mind the author charts out a course of events for the outsourcing industry. Read more to know how outsourcing, in author’s opinion, eventually becomes a “more manageable middle ground” in future.

Ohio Supreme court judgment: another feather in the LPO cap

2009-09-16T16:11:00.001+05:30

Ohio Supreme court showed strong support to the growth of legal outsourcing by issuing an Opinion that stated the use of LPO meets “Ohio’s professional and ethical standards”.

This opinion provides the much needed solidarity to the increasing legal outsourcing industry, which had lately seen a pathbreaking deal between Rio Tinto and CPA Global. The court’s Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline identified the series of tasks that can be outsourced: “Preparation of trial or appellate briefs, drafting of pleadings or motions, document review, legal research, and deposition or trial summaries”.

One thing that the court reinstated was client confidentiality. Compliance with the ethical standards forms the basis of the attorney and client relationship. Legal outsourcing companies should be sensitive enough to understand the client’s concern and work towards delivering services that satisfies all the parameters of quality.

Legal Outsourcing and Litigation Funding features in ABA publication

2009-09-16T16:10:00.000+05:30

Summer issue of the International lawyer features litigation financing and offshore legal outsourcing as “hot topics” in the legal business. Mark Ross in his blog talks about these two subjects and the framework of the article which discusses six Bar Associations that have released opinions on legal offshoring and four issues that form major areas of concern for the client.

Article talking about legal offshoring being published in one of the reputed ABA publications is an acknowledgement of the legal sector to the ongoing offshoring activity as well as the receptivity shown by the clients. The day is not far when legal offshoring would become an inevitable part of the legal sector.

San Diego Bar Opinion: Another testimonial in favour of legal outsourcing and offshoring

2009-09-16T16:07:00.001+05:30

After the New York State Bar Opinion in 1996, San Diego Bar Opinion comes as further confirmation to the ongoing legal outsourcing and offshoring in the legal domain. This opinion came as a result of an examination of a hypothetical case wherein a prosecutor in California has been appointed to defend an intellectual property dispute. This Counsel has limited experience in dealing with the regular work related to the dispute such as correspondence, research. The counsel decides to offshore its work to low tariff destinations like India. The question that was raised: “But the lawyer to assist in the practice of law is not permitted, in violation of California Rule of Professional Conduct 1-300, when he or she uses the services of a company subcontracted to carry out research and writing services on behalf of a client?” Consequently it became imperative to analyze whether provider of offshore legal services fall under the purview of “unauthorized practice of law”. The Opinion in response to this issue made a clear statement: “No, the service provided by the foreign supplier does not qualify for the “practice of law,” as defined by the rules of professional conduct”. This statement comes with an accompanying clause that designated lawyer should maintain both control and responsibility of the work outsourced. The client in this case can be informed about the provision if the client expects the case to be done entirely by the lawyer.

The clients are now in a stage where they have started understanding the forces of globalization working in the legal domain. They are getting comfortable with the idea of the work being offshored provided quality and confidentiality is maintained. The lawyer in this scenario needs to have his/ her own list of checks and balances when it comes to deciding the offshore service provider. The providers with domain expertise, pedigree and stability are in a better position to mitigate any conflicts of interest and deliver services that comply with quality standards.

San Diego Bar Opinion is another milestone in the path of legal offshoring business indicative of growth and profits. The question is not whether to go for legal offshoring but to think of ways to give 100% quality to the client.

Press Release: Legal Process Outsourcing in focus - The IGNOU collaborates with leading legal industry solutions provider Rainmaker in offering the Po

2009-07-28T17:42:00.000+05:30

New Delhi, India (25 July, 2009) – In the current world economic downturn, one sector that is continuously hitting the headlines with record-breaking deals is the Legal Process Outsourcing sector. The latest and most heralded success of the Indian LPO industry was the recent announcement by Rio Tinto, the global mining giant, that it had entered into a legal services outsourcing agreement with CPA Global, one of India’s leading LPO providers. The arrangement is likely to save up to 20% of Rio Tinto’s legal costs annually.

Increased costs of legal services, and legal outsourcing-friendly policy changes in key outsourcing destinations such as the US, has led the Indian LPO industry to a significant expansion point. With exponentially higher volumes of work at hand, the industry is looking at an estimated hiring of over 5000 law graduates in the current financial year alone.

Recognising this growth, the IGNOU School of Law collaborated with Rainmaker, the leading legal training and recruitment solutions provider to the Indian legal industry, to create a recognised certification – the Post-Graduate Diploma in Legal Process Outsourcing (PGDLPO) - that is specifically geared to address the talent needs of the sector.

“In keeping with our intention to make a world-class programme that is industry-oriented and of the best academic standards, we invited the participation of leading LPO industry players, legal academicians and practitioners in its creation. This, along with our other initiatives, such as a contemporary online-learning experience and access to internship opportunities, has ensured that it has met the expectations of the thousands of law graduates keen on preparing for a career in the LPO industry” said Prof. Srikrishna Deva Rao, Director of the IGNOU School of Law.

Guided by an Expert Advisory Committee constituted of representatives from leading L.P.O.s, the Clutch Group and UnitedLex, reputed Supreme Court practitioners, and stewarded by Prof. Dr. N.R. Madhava Menon (founder director of the National Law Universities in Bengaluru and Kolkata, and of the National Judicial Academy, Bhopal), the PGDLPO is the first and only Central University-accredited LPO training programme in the country.

“The programme, with nearly 500 applicants in its very first batch itself, has already proven to be highly sought after. It is heartening to note industry involvement in the programme through internship and scholarship offerings”, said Nikhil Chandra, CEO of Rainmaker. “In fact, the appreciation it has received internationally, and specifically in key outsourcing destinations like the US, such as calling it an ‘avant garde venture’ is testament to its vision of creating a global benchmark for LPO talent preparation” he added.

The programme, which is a 1-year post-graduate diploma, is delivered in a distance and online-learning format. “PGDLPO is not in the conventional distance education mould of correspondence study material and term-end testing. The real value addition is the online learning experience, which is interactive and highly participative. This is delivered through Rainmaker’s proprietary eMentor learning management system, a cutting-edge online learning solution. Despite hundreds of programme takers from our first batch being law graduates with full-time working commitments, the flexibility in study that e-learning offers them has resulted in the majority of them remaining continuously engaged with the learning process” says Kunal Mehra, who heads the programme delivery.

Given the initial success of the programme, the University has decided to run the programme twice a year, with a second intake scheduled for August this year. “We feel that an August batch would be very useful to final-year law students as it mirrors their college sessions, and effectively provides students with a valuable, industry-oriented post-graduate diploma simultaneously. We expect an increased participation from the law student community, and are working with law colleges from across the country to bring additional value, including fee reductions of up to Rs.1,500/- for law students, and special classes for law colleges that participate in our unique partner institution programme. This is a wonderful opportunity for law colleges to offer their students a world-class professional option after graduation.” said Prof. Rao.

The Post-Graduate Diploma in Legal Process Outsourcing is scheduled to commence its second batch from August 16, 2009. Enrolments are currently open. For more information on the programme, please visit www.ignouonline.ac.in/pgdlpo or www.rainmaker.co.in or call the Rainmaker office at +91 22 4035 0900 and the IGNOU School of Law at +91 11 2953 1115

US continues to provide business to India

2009-07-24T09:35:00.000+05:30

In a write-up posted on the blog Offshoring Times, one gets an idea that US would continue to offshore their work, especially legal work, to low cost destinations such as India. Indo-US trade has increased by 25% thus giving ample scope for further business.
In the legal domain with leading business conglomerates going bankrupt there is an upsurge of litigation cases. This has led to an increase in the demand of legal services. Thus Indian LPOs are in a position to gain from their services provided at competitive rates. Read more to what industry experts have to say about this trend.

Change in business and education

2009-07-24T09:34:00.000+05:30

With the advent of outsourcing and offshoring of legal work many changes have been noticed in the legal scene. Matador Legal has posted an article ‘Legal Outsourcing: Challenges and Changes in Law education’ in which two issues have been spelt out. The first being Data security – the foremost concern of all the clients who are offshoring their work. Companies like CPA Global have addressed this concern by imbibing the philosophy ‘Quality is way of life’ in their work culture and have been successful to comply by ISO standards.

The second issue is the need to change education given to US law graduates. The author suggests “There is a need to differentiate between functions which can be outsourced and which cannot be outsourced”. An understanding of the economics and changing dynamics of globalization would help both the students and the teachers to understand the legal industry.

Law firms in India

2009-07-24T09:32:00.000+05:30

In a comprehensive article written by Reena SenGupta the reader gets an insight to the present condition of the law firms in India.

Legal profession, which dates back to centuries, has always been seen as one of the elite professions. Many of the freedom fighters and stalwarts of independent India have been iconic figures of this vocation. But few decades back not much salary was paid to law graduates making them to go for another career. But now the scenario seems to change. India’s legal sector is growing exponentially. With the coming of LPOs the pace has accelerated further. Reena in this positive scene also points to some challenges that Indian legal sector faces. They are as follows:

1. UK firms have become aggressive recruiters taking bright talent from the campus itself
2. More than three quarters of Indian law firms have attrition and staff retention as here major problems
3. Many law firms are still family dominated and traditionally managed.
4. Lack of modern management and infrastructure

Read more to know the current scenario and how the Indian law firms are coping with pressures and turning the tide of business towards them.

Guest article: Legal Outsourcing Management Strategies 2009

2009-06-24T16:15:00.001+05:30

Rajiv Dogra

Various stakeholders of the LPO business convened at Legal Outsourcing Management Strategies (LOMS) 2009 conference to look at today and tomorrow of the industry.

Mark Ross, VP Global Marketing & Sales, Lawscribe spoke about ‘Thomas Friedman’s ‘World is flat’. He was of the opinion that with the impact of recession, client pressure on law firms, proposed deregulation of Legal services (in UK) even ‘legal profession flattens’ and ‘recession (is) acting as a catalyst.’

Vishal Aggarwal, Sr Manager at Wipro (LPO) recommended ‘Hold their hands’ approach to manage the perception problem faced from client side. He said ‘being factual & transparent’ is best medicine for LPO industry which is having ‘no single matured model’ so far. He added that quality, efficiency, TAT etc. are good to achieve results, however, more is needed to derive VALUE for the client.

Abhi Shah, CEO Clutch Group when asked about the trend of decreasing hourly rates of Indian LPO providers, stressed on the value of Quality to tackle this commoditization. Talking about talent, he was of view that apart from legal skills (a pre-requisite) employees should have US specific, service specific, client specific and project/case specific trainings.

For industry, the major concerns in term of quality is ‘acceptability of measuring metrics (by client)’ as law firms are not used to it and has been handled subjectively so far. Those who don’t agree would get client side feel from sentence “I know the Quality, when I see it”, which Michel quoted from his experiences with his client. On security front, Michel was of the view “Security has to be in the DNA of company”. He didn’t miss the opportunity to deepen the client fear, when he said “God may forgive you, client will not”.

In his presentation on ethics Mark Ross threw eye openers ‘Outsourcing in legal profession is delegation’ which is quite old & ‘What is new, where we outsource to’. He then dwelled in detail about ABA opinion on outsourcing of legal work. Mark said that law firms engaging in outsourcing should follow 3 simple rules in its communication to corporate client about LPO engagement and these three rules are DISCLOSE!, DISCLOSE! & DISCLOSE!

Taking Mark’s advice about disclosure in true spirit, David Hickey, Partner, Winston & Strawn LLP began disclosing the myths of legal outsourcing as the next speaker. One of the interesting realities presented by him was that ESI is expected to grow in big way, for which technology won’t be enough and there would be no substitute for having documents reviewed by human eye. I could not agree more with him when he said that even in the same team (under same roof) people communicate electronically.
Taking a dig at the misconception of LPO doing low-end work, he shared plethora of high-end activities done by LPOs such as:
Drafting & correcting privilege logs
Putting together contract database and identifying control weakness
Drafting case chronologies
Putting together witness binders
Conducting contract analysis
Compliance/regulatory work
Conducted research
Drafting head notes & case summaries

On the myth of high-security risk associated with LPOs, he was of the view that well-established LPOs have security systems in place that have standards higher than even the magic circle firms. His experience about LPO security has come from the fact that he has visited more than dozen LPOs in India & Philippines, which according to him are two leading legal outsourcing destinations.
Three important things for an LPO in his mind are QUALITY!, QUALITY ! & QUALITY!
However, he cautioned LPOs and said ‘Measure (quality) by the rule of reason’ and don’t use statistics to hide the facts. Looking at the issue of price wars he said “Industry should strongly resist the race to bottom”.

Michael Ford, EVP – American Discovery, took us through the drivers for corporate counsel and law firms to embrace LPO. He also dug at the real world LPO concerns and their possible solutions. The crux of his solution was for LPO providers to assume leadership and knowledge resource role and be an advisor to client, instead of being just another vendor/processor. If I have to use one phrase as I understood his point, ‘become an irreplaceable partner’ for client by playing on your strength areas.

Day 2 began with a talk from Michael Ford, the Chairperson. Michael shared his thoughts on industry – stressing on topics such as commoditization diluting the value, addressable market for LPOs, scope for new players, and lack of industry standards and collaborations. Analyzing further into the missing industry standards, he suggested LPO industry to have self governance model based on P2P defined standards. He advocated creation of an industry body, which he mandated is good in the evolutionary phase of industry heading towards maturity.

Dr. Akhil Prasad, VP & Head of legal at Fidelity Business services (India) provided an in-house counsels view to the audience. Looking at the cost-cutting challenges faced by in-house counsels, he was optimistic that LPO can be helpful in containing the costs. Optimism apart, he also shared some of the concerns that are important before in-house counsels can make a decision to outsource to any LPO. According to him technology is one of the key enablers for LPO.

Tariq Akbar, CEO - LegalEase Solutions, was of the view that consolidation, captive units and scaling for high-end work are the trends. Tariq also talked about the three models that are currently employed by the in-house counsels in engaging LPOs. Sharing his ideas on VC interest in the industry, he agreed that startup money is hard to get, though there had been interest of VC’s like IAN, Sequoia Capital, Canaan Partners, Helion Venture Partners, Glenrock etc.

The next presentation was on the ‘Future of Legal Outsourcing’ by Ritvik Lucose, VP Rainmaker. He was of the view that talent is and will be the challenge for the industry where quite a chunk of graduates passing out every year are unemployable and should be addressed at the earliest.
I feel that with the advent of LPO, where you can mark your way regardless of whether you have a godfather or not (take away of one of the discussion), the serious employable talent may be around the corner. LPOs can also prompt people who wanted to pursue law, but were scared of facing the courts, as a reason to go ahead and still not compromise on their earning ability. This may be an overtly optimistic view, but even if this doesn’t happen this way, industry is gearing itself to work with legal education institutes to increase the employable talent. This was the consensus area. Some of them like Cobra Legal are already working with law schools to enhance the curriculum.

Next session ‘Opportunities of Legal Outsourcing in the Indian Domestic market from a banking perspective’ was presented by B. Gopalakrishnan, President & Head Legal Department, Axis Bank, wherein Mr. Gopalakrishnan presented the idea that Indian entities are also looking at opportunities to work with LPOs that can help them in reducing mundane work and look at the concerns of the banking industry. Though, he also stressed upon the importance of quality.

Over all two key themes emerged in the conference - quality and security, as they are the key challenges as well as hygiene factors for this industry. Training and grooming of right talent is must for the LPO growth. Though recession has provided the opportunity for selling LPO concept, it has also created challenges to scale-up by drying investment capital. As rightly said by Abhi Shah, ‘Current market gonna separate men from boys’
Over all conference spilled lot of enthusiasm for the LPO industry, for all the representatives coming from various locations across the globe. It would be very appropriate to mention the final words of conference from Michael Ford, ‘Phir Milenge - Alwida - Jai Hind’.

Rajiv Dogra, analyses markets for CPA Global's different business units including Legal Support Services.

Press Release : Rio Tinto signs legal services outsourcing agreement with CPA Global

2009-06-19T19:42:00.000+05:30

New Delhi, India - June 12, 2009 - Rio Tinto today announced that it has entered into a legal services outsourcing agreement with CPA Global that is projected to save Rio Tinto up to 20% annually in legal costs.

Under the agreement, CPA Global, one of the world’s leading providers of outsourced legal support services, are providing a team of lawyers in India to support Rio Tinto’s in-house legal function on a global basis.

Initially, the work undertaken by CPA Global includes contract review and drafting, legal research, and document review. However, it is anticipated that the scope of work will expand to cover other routine legal services work traditionally handled in-house by Rio Tinto or shared amongst the company’s panel of law firms.

Rio Tinto’s managing attorney, Leah Cooper, said: “We took a long hard look at our internal costs and the amount we were spending with outside counsel and saw an opportunity to make significant changes to the way we deliver legal services to the group. We have developed a ground-breaking legal model with CPA Global that will generate tremendous savings and serve the business without compromising quality.

“By shifting work to CPA Global our internal team will be freed up to get involved in some of the more complex and challenging legal matters, which in the past might have been sent to outside counsel at significant cost.

“As more of our standard legal work is filtered though to CPA Global, we will have more time to lift our heads up from the day-to-day reactive delivery of legal services and focus on being more proactive. We will have more time to spend with the business, develop stronger relationships and understand what we can do to prevent legal issues developing in the first place with a stronger focus on prevention rather than cure.”

Andrew Loach, CPA Global’s Vice President, Legal Support Services, said: “We are delighted to have been appointed as Rio Tinto’s legal services outsourcing partner. Rio Tinto have really done their homework on this and recognised that there is a better, more cost efficient way of structuring your legal services work, without sacrificing quality or security.”

Director – CPA Global and Country Head – India, Bhaskar Bagchi, added: “CPA Global’s India team will serve as an extension of Rio Tinto’s internal legal department. They are handpicked, well trained legal professionals who will work on a whole range of Rio Tinto legal matters from across the globe.”

Commenting on the choice of CPA Global, Rio Tinto’s Leah Cooper said: “CPA Global provided us with fresh thinking about how to unlock real savings on our legal costs without altering the level of service we offered our internal clients. What we particularly liked about CPA Global was that they are legal outsourcing specialists, not generalists, with a global size and scale.”

About CPA Global
With clients in over 100 countries, CPA Global is one of the world’s leading providers of legal process outsourcing (LPO) services. Now celebrating its 40th year of operations, CPA Global provides lifecycle management services for intellectual property such as patent, design and trademark searching, watching, renewals, and portfolio strategy. CPA Global is also a leader in the growing market for outsourced document review, contract management and litigation support services, helping law firms and corporations to realise value by managing risk, cost and capacity. Founded in Jersey, Channel Islands in 1969, CPA Global today employs more than 1,200 people in 16 offices in eight countries. For further information, please visit: www.cpaglobal.com or contact our media relations team:

Garima Misra
Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide
Mobile: +91 9910106993
Email: garima.misra@ogilvy.com

Karishma Dawar
Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide
Mobile: +91 9873178498
Email: karishma.dawar@ogilvy.com

About Rio Tinto
Rio Tinto is a leading international mining group headquartered in the UK, combining Rio Tinto plc, a London and NYSE listed company, and Rio Tinto Limited, which is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange.

Rio Tinto's business is finding, mining, and processing mineral resources. Major products are aluminium, copper, diamonds, energy (coal and uranium), gold, industrial minerals (borax, titanium dioxide, salt, talc) and iron ore. Activities span the world but are strongly represented in Australia and North America with significant businesses in South America, Asia, Europe and southern Africa.

For further information, please contact:
Media Relations, London
Christina Mills
Office: +44 (0) 20 8080 1306
Mobile: +44 (0) 7825 275 605
Nick Cobban
Office: +44 (0) 20 8080 1305
Mobile: +44 (0) 7920 041 003

Media Relations, Americas
Tony Shaffer
Office: +1 202 393 0266
Mobile: +1 202 256 3667

Investor Relations, London
Nigel Jones
Office: +44 (0) 20 7781 2049
Mobile: +44 (0) 7917 227365
David Ovington
Office: +44 (0) 20 7781 2051
Mobile: +44 (0) 7920 010 978

Investor Relations, North America
Jason Combes
Office: +1 (0) 801 204 2919
Mobile: +1 (0) 801 558 2645

Email: questions@riotinto.com
Website: www.riotinto.com

Susskind writes about Rio Tinto and CPA Global deal

2009-06-19T19:40:00.000+05:30

Richard Susskind, the author of The End of Lawyers? and Visiting Professor at the Oxford Internet Institute, commented on the recent path breaking deal between Rio Tinto and CPA Global.

He said “it is evidence of a profound change in the legal world. In-house lawyers are under great pressure to reduce their head count and to spend less on external law firms, but, at the same time, their workload is increasing.

Clients, in short, need their advisers to provide more-for-less. One way to meet this challenge is for external lawyers to charge less. Most firms are indeed cutting their hourly rates and offering fixed fee arrangements; while many clients are driving down fees through e-auctioning and other devices. For now, it is a buyer’s market.”

This deal has been perceived in the legal market as one of the ground-breaking move that might change the way legal offshoring industry is perceived in the European market.

Point to be noted …

2009-06-19T19:38:00.000+05:30

In the recently conducted Financial Times Legal outsourcing roundtable two main issues came out in the discussion. First, what is the line of separation between KPO and LPO and second the future of newly qualified lawyers in view of the recent changes in the legal industry such as LPO, the Legal Services Act, alternative billing etc.

Mark Ross has in his write-up spoken about in detail about these points. The nature of work done by LPO is not solely dependant on the fact that the purchaser is a law firm or corporate legal department. Ross in his article talks about various services that otherwise are being outsourced by the law firms but are of HRO and ITO nature.

And with respect to the education and future of the law graduates one has to keep in mind that the sole aim of education is to empower. Outdated syllabus and perspective belonging to the bygone era will only prove detrimental for the students when they would have to face the dynamic reality of the legal industry. The emphasis in the curriculum should be based on the forces of demand in the legal domain rather than archaic thinking of the syllabus setters. IGNOU’s step towards providing a diploma in LPO can be seen as an avant garde venture into the new legal education arena.

Simmons and Simmons to rock the LPO industry

2009-06-19T19:36:00.000+05:30

Simmons and Simmons, one of the major law firms, is considering the option of using qualified lawyers in low cost jurisdictions to get the benefit of 50% cost saving.

Managing Partner Mark Dawkins said “We’re not going to defend a business model that clients don’t want to have to pay for.” This time the company’s “three-year strategy” is to maximize efficiency. In light of this vision they are thinking of “… new ways of working at the top end of the market”. And the step to move work offshore will come as one of the decisive decisions not only for the firm but also for the industry. It would set a precedent for other law firms in using agency lawyers in offshore locations.

Report by ValueNotes - 3% of law firms in UK, US offshore back-office work to India

2009-06-19T19:25:00.000+05:30

In a recently published report by ValueNotes, 3% of law firms in UK, US offshore their back-office work to India. This number though less is in no way discouraging. Because of the fact that reasons attributed to it aren’t impossible to deal with. The first is the quality of work. With companies getting ISO certification and growing emphasis on quality one can gauge the sensitivity shown by offshore LPO service providers towards the clients’ concerns.

The second major issue is data security. LPOs deal with highly confidential matter. Thereby it becomes imperative that documents are handled in a sensitive manner. Companies have started following ISMS policies and are aware and alert to the potential dangers of leaking of information.

The third issue is lack of conviction about the benefits of offshoring. In order to tackle this many companies have opened offices on onshore locations so that communication can happen in an effortless way. Also the recent trends in global economy and successful cases of offshoring such as CPA Global dealings with the Microsoft and SDD Global Solutions role in the Los Angeles libel case against HBO’S “Da Ali G Show” are indicative of the changing time.

Press Release: The Global Outsourcing 100 – another feather in the cap of CPA Global

2009-05-21T14:28:00.001+05:30

International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) recognized CPA Global as one of the world's top outsourcing providers.
CPA Global was placed in 60th place overall, the highest position of any pure-play LPO provider in the IAOP's 2009 Global Outsourcing 100 rankings of outsourcing providers -- including the major business process and IT outsourcing companies. CPA Global was also among the top ten of privately owned outsourcing companies. This decision came after following a rigorous analysis from an independent panel of judges on areas including the company's size, growth, certifications and customer references.
CPA Global's Executive Vice President, Legal Support Services, Chris Veator, said: "We are delighted to have been recognized as a leader in legal process outsourcing in the IAOP's Global Outsourcing 100 list. Our high ranking reflects not only the scale and quality of our operations, but also our commitment to delivering excellent service to our clients, who include some of the world's biggest corporations and law firms. The comprehensive range of services we provide, our stringent quality assurance metrics, strict security controls and the high caliber of our people are also critical factors in CPA Global achieving a leadership position in the LPO market."
Jagdish Dalal, chairman of the Global Outsourcing 100 judges panel, commented: "Each year the competition to be named to the top 100 companies continues to reach higher levels, as the outsourcing industry continues to grow and mature in many markets. Getting named to The Global Outsourcing 100 is a great recognition, particularly given the strong competition. CPA Global should be proud of achieving excellence in their field."
CPA Global was also named as one of the top five companies by industry focus in the pharmaceutical sector and one of the top 20 companies by industry focus in the services and technology sectors in the 2009 Global Outsourcing 100 list.
About CPA Global
With clients in over 100 countries, CPA Global is one of the world's leading providers of legal process outsourcing (LPO) services. Now celebrating its 40th year of operations, CPA Global provides lifecycle management services for intellectual property such as patent, design and trademark searching, watching, renewals, and portfolio strategy. CPA Global is also a leader in the growing market for outsourced document review, contract management and litigation support services, helping law firms and corporations to realize value by managing risk, cost and capacity. Founded in Jersey, Channel Islands in 1969, CPA Global today employs some 1,200 people in 16 offices in eight countries.
CPA Global's Indian operations employ more than 500 people in two state-of-the-art LPO centers in the Noida and Gurgaon districts of Delhi. The company's focus on quality and security in its Indian LPO business is underlined by its certifications in ISO 9001 for operational quality and ISO27001 for IT security. For further information visit: http://www.cpaglobal.com/
About The Global Outsourcing 100(TM)
The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (TM) (IAOP(TM)) is in its fourth year of compiling its annual ranking of the world's best outsourcing service providers and advisors -- The Global Outsourcing 100. As part of The Global Outsourcing 100, IAOP also introduced a new list for the first time in 2009, The World's Best Outsourcing Advisors.
The Global Outsourcing 100 and its sub lists are essential references for companies seeking new and expanded relationships with the best companies in the industry. The lists include companies from around the world that provide the full spectrum of outsourcing services -- not just information technology and business process outsourcing, but also facility services, real estate and capital asset management, manufacturing and logistics. They include not only today's leaders, but tomorrow's rising stars.
The World's Best Outsourcing Advisors, new for 2009, is geared specifically to companies that are outstanding global outsourcing advisors and consultants. In addition to being part of The Global Outsourcing 100, the new list of advisors ranks the top consultant, legal and related advisory firms globally, and is a valuable reference tool for companies needing expert advice and guidance with their outsourcing projects. IAOP also added in 2009 The Global Outsourcing 100 Plus industry-wide report featuring applicant company profiles and rankings with industry insights. The additional report is available for purchase.
About IAOP
The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals(TM) (IAOP(TM)) is the global, standard-setting organization and advocate for the outsourcing profession. With more than 100,000 members and affiliates worldwide, IAOP helps companies increase their outsourcing success rate, improve their outsourcing ROI, and expand the opportunities for outsourcing across their businesses. To learn more, visit http://www.outsourcingprofessional.org/.

Two Interpretations of the Same Reality

2009-05-21T14:20:00.001+05:30

Mark Ross, brings forth two different points of view in his article with respect to the future of the legal profession. On the one hand, Richard Susskind, renowned authority on future trends impacting the legal profession and author of "The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services," sees a wave of change happening in the legal domain owing to currently jeopardized economic situation. On the other hand, Keith Wetmore, Morrison and Foerster Chairman, sees the maintenance of status-quo in the legal terrain after the economy revives. While the former sees a change in perspective regarding legal services, their delivery and technology connected with it, the latter is of the opinion that antiquity would continue as ever.

Richard Susskind foresees a rapid and fundamental change in terms of delivery of legal services. This change in his opinion is an outcome of current economic crisis. The legal market will become a “buyer’s market” with clients paying focused attention on mitigating costs, enhancing quality and finding alternative ways of sourcing work. Lawyers will have to find more innovative ways to sell their services and make them cost-effective. One of the ways suggested by Susskind is through collaboration. Social networking tools would be used to do much of the work that was otherwise done by the law firms. Another path breaking change that Susskind envisages is the commoditization of legal services. Many of the legal tasks will become standardized and systematized. Accordingly it would be outsourced or offshored depending on the benefits accrued by adopting either of the option.
At loggerheads is the opinion voiced by Keith Wetmore. “I think it’s wrong to say things have fundamentally changed. The world economy will grow again and when it does clients will need lawyers to advise in that growth”. He believes that basic law firm set-up will continue without many changes, though he does recognize that recent layoffs “highlight some of the short-term tweaks that are taking place”. He blames the dysfunctional aspect of the set-up to the absence of attrition. “The entire law firm model is built on a number of assumptions. One of which is that there will be 20 to 23 per cent attrition of associates year-in, year-out. Without that attrition, the entire system collapses”. Thus Wetmore is convinced that traditional law firm will continue to operate provided the economy grows and there are high rates of attrition.

Law firms to go in for a cylindrical makeover

2009-05-21T14:19:00.000+05:30

Major law firms in US, Canada and Australia have a pyramidal set-up. The top echelons are occupied by the partners who are supported by an army of supporting staff constituted by associates, counsel and non-equity partners placed at the bottom. Ron Friedmann in his article talks about an alternative structure in order to make the entire set-up efficient and cost effective.

A cylindrical structure according to Ron will help in reducing the base of the law firm. In other words, one needs to examine the battalion created to support the top stakeholders in a well detailed manner so that high costs involved in its maintenance as well as infrastructure can be controlled. One of the possible ways suggested by the author is outsourcing. The pyramid can do away with its huge base and instead create a system wherein routine and simple legal tasks can be outsourced or offshored and the management can work on cases and issues that require a specialized legal expertise. Offshore units with their benefits such as the ability to scale-up operations in a cost effective manner, 24 hour work day, and a willing workforce can prove to be instrumental in this image makeover. “No longer will there be armies to support a few generals”.

The cylindrical structure will not only further enhance the productivity and quality of large law firms but it will also make the clients reap the benefits of smart work culture at leading offshore based providers of quality legal support services. Such offshore companies employ talented lawyers and engineers who are only too keen on working for and being associated with marquee law firms from the developed world. What is seen as “grunt work” by associates in the law firms is seen as a fantastic opportunity to learn about the practice of common law overseas. As with all things, attitude matters and American, Canadian and Australian law firms only stand to gain by tapping the positive attitude.

Press Release: CPA Global delivers new standard in document review services with DiscoveryMetrics™ analytics technology

2009-05-14T04:01:00.001+05:30

CPA Global delivers new standard in document review services with DiscoveryMetrics™ analytics technology

CPA Global, one of the world’s leading providers of legal outsourcing services, has partnered with Casewerx Development, LLC (Casewerx) to provide corporate legal departments and law firms with a new industry standard for managed document review services.

The partnership enables CPA Global to further enhance their best-in-class document review services with a customised version of Casewerx’s DiscoveryMetrics – one of the industry’s first, platform-independent, web-based document review analytics technologies. CPA Global’s proprietary service delivery methodology and unmatched approach to quality control combined with their unique implementation of DiscoveryMetrics ensures unrivalled accuracy, transparency, cost efficiency and predictability.

CPA Global is the first legal process outsourcing (LPO) provider to introduce DiscoveryMetrics analytics technology.

Commenting on the new partnership, Brandon Daniels, Associate Vice President of Legal Solutions for CPA Global, said: “DiscoveryMetrics brings ground-breaking, web-based analytics technology that we can use to measure any project on any major document review platform. CPA Global has engineered and perfected a document review methodology that delivers high quality, defensible results - and we have worked closely with Casewerx to custom-tailor DiscoveryMetrics to optimise and measure that process. Our clients have been very enthusiastic about our process, our technology and our results.”

Manny Guerrero, a Partner with Casewerx Development, LLC, said: “We are excited to be working with the thought-leaders at CPA Global and to have DiscoveryMetrics as an integral part of their document review solution. CPA Global is the first LPO provider to bring DiscoveryMetrics to market and we are delighted to partner with them to tailor our product to reflect their unmatched quality process. CPA Global’s carefully engineered, metrics-driven document review process provides enhanced transparency while dramatically reducing document review costs. On one of their current projects, CPA Global is saving a corporate client over $15 million in document review fees.”

- ends -

About CPA Global
With clients in over 100 countries, CPA Global is one of the world’s leading providers of legal process outsourcing (LPO) services. Now celebrating its 40th year of operations and with offices across the United States, Europe, Asia and the Pacific, CPA Global is well placed to support attorney firms and corporate clients with a diverse set of legal and IP specific needs.

CPA Global provides lifecycle management services for intellectual property such as patent, design and trademark searching, watching, renewals, and portfolio strategy: and is also a

leader in the growing market for outsourced document review, contract management and litigation support services, helping law firms and corporations to realise value by managing
risk, cost and capacity. CPA Global’s leadership position is underlined by its ranking in the 2008 Black Book of Outsourcing as the number one LPO provider for contract and legal document review.

Founded in Jersey, Channel Islands in 1969, CPA Global today employs some 1,200 people in 16 offices in eight countries. For further information, please visit: www.cpaglobal.com

About Casewerx Development, LLC.
Casewerx Development, LLC is a software development and consulting firm specializing in litigation technology. Over the last fifteen years, the principals of Casewerx have developed industry-leading collaboration software used by thousands of litigators in nearly half of the AmLaw 100 firms. With DiscoveryMetrics, one of the industry’s first platform-independent, web-based analytics tool for document review, Casewerx continues to deliver highly innovative, provocative, and cost-saving litigation technologies to the legal market. DiscoveryMetrics enables corporate legal departments to dramatically reduce document review costs, without sacrificing quality, compliance or outside counsel oversight. With advanced productivity, quality and financial analytics, DiscoveryMetrics allows Law Firms, LPOs and Managed Review providers to collaborate and deliver transparent, high quality document review services at much lower, much more predictable costs. For more information, please visit www.discoverymetrics.com

Media Contacts

CPA Global
US: Julie Mandell +1 (571) 227-7025, jmandell@cpaglobal.com
UK: Steve Clark +44 (0)1784 224 351, sclark@cpaglobal.com
Rob Coveney +44 (0)1784 224 557, rcoveney@cpaglobal.com

Casewerx US: Manny Guerrero +1 (908) 868-4033, mguerrero@casewerx.com

Legallyours featured in the Top 100 Outsourcing Resources list of oDesk

2009-05-11T11:09:00.000+05:30

Legallyours featured in the 100 Best Outsourcing and Offshoring Blogs & Resources list created by the oDesk blog.

oDesk deals with online work teams providing the best business model for both buyers and providers.

The blog was one of the five chosen blogs that specificallytalks about issues regarding the LPO space. The web served as the universe from which five blogs were chosen under the general topic of LPO. These blogs are considered by the oDesk as the best resource for all information and opinion related to outsourcing and offshoring. With scores of blogs available in the web dealing with LPO industry, featuring in this list comes as recognition of the work done by the author. The best article according to the oDesk is “More than 100 Law Firms and Legal Departments used LPO”.

“In India legal profession is not a business and it is not up for sale”

2009-04-28T10:29:00.002+05:30

Lalit Bhasin, the President of the Society of Indian Law firms, in one of his interviews to the Economic Times of India remarked

"The demand for opening legal services sector in India does not come from Indian businesses or professionals or even foreign multinational companies…. the demand comes from foreign lawyers and particularly those from the U.K. It is obvious that the U.K. is witnessing a negative growth so far as legal profession is concerned. Accordingly, India and China offer good prospects -- but the problem is that, in India, the legal profession is not a business and it is not up for sale."

Mark Ross had in his blog commented on this statement by saying “It is simply impossible to separate the law from the economic forces that impact every other professional services industry. The lack of reciprocity, which Bhasin references, for Indian attorneys wishing to practice within the UK or US, is also a false comparison. This is purely a protectionist stance, nothing more, nothing less.”

In the current state of volatile economy coupled with accelerating pace of change in the legal sector, it is rather strange that some people still try to insulate the legal sector from the dynamics of globalization. The recent LLP Act is one such indicator where the Indian legal sector has started opening its doors for the foreign firms.

The call of the time is not to be like an ostrich and shut one’s eyes to happenings around us rather it is the opportunity to scale-up the quality of our domestic Indian firms and give a tough but healthy competition to foreign firms. After all, competition is good for the consumers.

LPO industry in India

2009-04-26T20:26:00.004+05:30

Background
‘In 1991, with India running out of hard currency, Manmohan Singh … decided that India had to open its economy. “Our Berlin Wall fell … and it was like unleashing a caged tiger … We went from quiet self confidence to outrageous ambition in a decade” [Tarun Das, Chief Mentor, CII]
Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat

In the era of liberalization, the Indian economy moved from being a moribund and a closed set-up to become a dynamic growing economy with an annual average of 6% growth between 1991 and 2005. This growth was led by many factors, the most important being the growth in the service sector of the country. According to AT Kearney’s annual global services index, India is the current global capital for outsourcing and offshoring with other Asian destinations dominating the top five positions.
1. India
2. China
3. Malaysia
4. Thailand
5. Brazil
6. Indonesia
7. Chile
8. Philippines
9. Bulgaria
10. Mexico

The service sector in India accounted for about 52% of GDP in 2004-05. In fact India’s service exports had more than doubled from US$ 25bn in 2003-04 to US$ 60bn in 2005-06 and now accounts for nearly 37% exports.(1) According to the IMF report in 2006, productivity growth in India has been strongest in services. Emphasis on strong growth, privatization, foreign investment, and tax reduction provided the much needed acceleration to the already emerging economy.

In this burgeoning sector, a major chunk of the service sector is constituted by Information technology (IT) and IT-enabled services. The software services in Indian economy increased by 33% which registered revenue of USD 31.4bn. The outsourcing industry has been the stalwart in achieving this growth. This rapid increase in growth is directly correlated with the technical and critical aspect of the work being outsourced. An upward trajectory has been witnessed– moving from back office operations to becoming more knowledge intensive in nature. In other words, the movement has roughly been from BPO to KPO to now LPO.

Legal process outsourcing

“Legal process outsourcing refers to the offshoring of different elements in the legal process by law-firms, corporations, and in-house legal departments (mainly in US and UK) to offshore centres (mainly in India).(2) It is a very recent phenomena which has in few years gained huge momentum. The first firm to do legal outsourcing in India was Bickel & Brewer in 1995 with its office, I&A International, in Hyderabad. It dealt with digitalization of the legal documents and creating searchable databases. Later on it hired lawyers to review documents produced in lawsuits. In 2001, GE was the first company to offshore its in-house legal work in India. Since then a lot of companies have entered the arena in one form or other.

There are four basic models of LPO firms under which the companies function in this domain. They are – captive centres (when a large corporation starts its own centre in foreign country responsible for its legal and business processing issues), captive centres formed by U.S./U.K. firms and their subsidiaries (law firms in the U.S./ U.K are working with firms to India to set up subsidiaries to provide legal and paralegal services for export purposes only. For example, Fox & Mandal and ALMT Legal, two Indian based law firms, are teaming up with Patent Metrix, an Irvine-California based law firm), joint ventures by U.S./U.K based firms and third party vendors providing services to law firms and in-house counsel.(2) Among these, research indicates that it is most difficult to maintain captive centres. Capgemini, the French IT services & Consulting company, on the basis of Forrester research found that the cost of starting and maintaining captives far exceeds the cost of hiring third party alternatives and that 60% of the captives are struggling in India.(3) Currently, third party vendors are the ones that have proved to be beneficial both for the clients and the company itself. Whichever model it may be it is an indisputable fact that this industry has huge potential. Between 1990 and 2005, the legal services industry grew at an approximate annual rate of 6.75% and is expected to grow at 6% per year for the next decade, 2006-15.(4) Also, different estimates made by different research entities present a picture that spells out business and opportunities. ValueNotes projects LPO to become a $640mn industry by 2010. While Evalueserve estimated revenue from LPO at $300mn by 2010. Forrester research projected that legal outsourcing to India will reach $4bn by 2015. Although these estimates are varied, they do give a sense of huge potential of business increase in LPO industry in India. The biggest economy currently served by this industry – the United States, has a huge legal services sector. According to US Census Bureau, the legal services industry in the US generated approximately $184 bn in revenue in 2008. Even a small fraction of legal work outsourced would translate into huge amount of business for offshore service providers. Ron Friedman on the basis of a survey, “The Change Agenda: Looking Ahead”, conducted by Rees Morrison and Aric Press came to a deduction that U.S. LPO spending in 2013 will be almost $2bn.

Growth in LPO domain

The LPO industry has in a span of few years seen major mergers and acquisitions, partnerships and alliances. The first acquisition happened when Mysore-based Software Paradigms International (SPI) India acquired the entire BPO/LPO clientele of Comat Technologies across the US and UK, which was served by Comat’s Mysore-based operations. Such deals are indicative of the pace of growth of the industry. Gavin Brier in his article “Recession” “Depression” Unemployment” “Meltdown” “Crisis” … wrote “The IT industry took 13 years to come to maturity, BPOs took half a decade and now LPOs are emerging in a big way.” Even magic circle firms like Clifford Chance are taking interest in doing business in the Indian subcontinent. Established LPOs including Pangea3, Jurimatrix and SDD Global have attracted a significant level of private equity and venture capital. Big player like CPA Global has entered into strategic alliances to further enhance their products thereby giving an edge to their services. In 2008, CPA Global entered into an alliance with major electronic discovery software provider Applied Discovery Inc., a division of Lexis Nexis. The relationship ensures that CPA’s clients around the world benefit from a total review and e-discovery solution. Such tie-ups have played an instrumental role in making LPO a fast growing business. Recently UnitedLex entered into an alliance with Huron Consulting Group as well as Ocean Tomo, thus further enhancing and enriching the quality of their services and expanding their market. In terms of mergers and acquisitions, in 2008, Integreon acquired Datum Legal. CPA Global in the same year acquired SVPG to strengthen formers’ presence in German market. In short, business deals in the LPO space has made the industry grow from few vendors to more than 100 within a remarkable short period of time.

Services provided

A plethora of services are provided by the legal offshore service providers. The key being – contract management, document review, legal research, deposition summaries, litigation documents, patent renewals, patent analytics, IP support services, data verification, IP recordals, patent research, trademark renewals, trademark watching, digital content watching, trademark search, and so on. These services can be categorized under two categories:
1. Manpower intensive functions – Such as legal transcription, document conversion, legal coding and indexing, document review etc.
2. High-value services – They include patent and general legal research services like freedom-to-operate search, patent assessment, patent portfolio management, statutory and case law research, due diligence services such as technical, legal and financial analysis of companies for mergers and acquisitions, and contract drafting and review of contracts.

Corporate legal departments are the major clientele of these afore-mentioned services. A key consideration among corporations world over is the reduction of costs though not at the expense of quality. Indian LPOs have, in such a scenario, provided cost-effective solutions while maintaining expected or higher quality levels and in some cases even exceeded the quality provided by in-house teams. A balance between cost-and-quality aside, there are other advantages that vendors located offshore are able to provide to their clients. These include the benefits emanating from having an effective 24-hour work day and more importantly, providing access to a workforce that is keen enough to service tasks thought of as ‘mundane’ by in-house staff. Adherence to operations methodologies similar to Six Sigma and compliance with global certifications such as ISO 9001:2008 (Quality Management System) ensure consistency in the quality of the work product delivered from an offshore location such as India. For mature and stable providers of offshore legal services, the recession has only added to the business with clients expanding the offshore teams who had been serving them either in a shared model or as a dedicated team. As an example, one of CPA Global’s European telecommunication company recently doubled the number of engineers performing patent research and analysis for them.

In this manner, the ‘recession’ has further enhanced its attractiveness and financial viability. The present economic conditions have also made corporations, primarily the ones having large patent portfolios, to look for ways to reduce cost (e.g. by abandoning unused segments) or generate new revenue (e.g. by out-licensing/sale of patents). Large companies such as CPA Global, which have multi-shore operations and services catering to patent monetization, have also gained from such focus on the use of patent portfolios.

Bhaskar Bagchi, country head CPA Global, in his interview with Financial Times remarked “There is now a very clear economic reason for both corporate and law firms to look for offshoring. India has proven that they can deliver the same quality, if not better, from what they got when they did the work onshore.” A clear indicator of this growing profit and business is the rate of hiring seen recently in the LPOs. Rohan Dalal, managing director of Mindcrest India, plans to hire “400 plus staff in a phase-wise manner”. CPA Global has set the target of 2,000 employees by 2010. Other companies like Pangea3, UnitedLex and others have also reported plans for increasing their teams. The emphasis is not only on recruiting but also on retaining the valuable human resource. Companies have initiated various programs to promote a culture of growth and what Bhaskar called “empowerment”.

Distinguishing aspects of LPO industry

The LPO industry thrives on innovation, constant learning and development. A lot of emphasis is laid on the fact that employees are regularly updated with information as well as required skills. This education is not only limited to technical knowledge but also involves acquiring skills to be able to operate in a global environment. Himanshu Arora, Global Head, Learning and Development at CPA Global, in an interview told about the objective of providing training to the employees. He said, “The education doesn’t pertain only to enhancing knowledge and skills but also educate employees about how to deal with different cultures which helps in building fruitful cross-cultural relationships. Best practical content is used, which is developed by the subject matter experts to make the learning process an enriching one”. Another big LPO unit, UnitedLex brings in two U.S. patent attorneys to train the lawyers and review their work.(3) Thus, the opportunity to learn in a consistent manner and with the company laying stress on this aspect gives the employee required exposure as well as a chance of growth. Being a knowledge-driven service it becomes imperative that the stress on learning continues throughout the service tenure.

Conclusion

LPO as an industry is quite different from other knowledge-based industries. The work done is high on intellectual level and is also expertise-centred. As it is in the growing stage, one can expect a lot of innovations happening. With the newly enacted LLP Act, it is expected that international law firms will also be making foray into the Indian legal market. Sec 59 of the LLP Act allows law firms to set up their business within Indian boundaries. Such firms will act both as consumers and producers of trained force suitable for addressing the legal support needs of global corporations. In that respect, the LPO industry and the international law firms will converge and are expected to fuel the growth of each other. It is also expected that some international law firms may also setup their own ‘captives’ that will address the offshore legal support needs of their clients.

Knowledge intensive outsourcing functions such as offshore legal offshoring aka LPO have the real potential of becoming indispensable tools in a corporate strategists’ toolkit. What is needed is a ‘leap of faith’ to move from transaction-oriented client-vendor relationships to a relation that is a true partnership. Anyone who has used an external provider for legal needs, offshore or otherwise, knows that depth and ability to fulfill complex needs comes with time. The same is true for work done by engineers and lawyers located offshore. Offshore companies that have healthy client relationships and talent retention practices that actually work would be ideally placed to grow into the role of such partners.

References:

1. India 2007. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Government of India.
2. Legal Process outsourcing: Can offshoring of legal services to India be both efficient and ethical? Maya Karwande. Legally yours blog.
3. “Will tough economy push companies to outsourcing” David Hechler. http://www.law.com/jsp/ihc/PubArticleIHC.jsp?id=1202426925586
4. Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO)-Hype Vs. Reality. E-ValueServe.

- Megha Pande

Indian Legal Outsourcing Scores Major Hollywood Victory

2009-04-23T19:42:00.001+05:30

A.R. Rahman conquered Hollywood, winning the Academy Award for Best Original Score, in Slumdog Millionaire. Now the Indian lawyers at SDD Global Solutions in Mysore have scored their own Hollywood triumph, doing the legal research, and drafting the motion papers, to defeat a Los Angeles libel case against HBO’s “Da Ali G Show,” starring Sacha Baron Cohen of “Borat” and “Bruno” fame. It’s one thing for an Indian legal outsourcing company to draft a brief for a U.S. litigation. That’s been done several times before, by SDD Global, Atlas Legal Research, Lexadigm and others, to the credit of the outstanding Indian lawyers who did the work. But in this case, the work was victorious, and it resulted in a precedent-setting decision protecting comedy writers, comedians, and their producers and broadcasters everywhere.

In this case, the Indian lawyers at SDD Global drafted, and are credited by name in, the successful summary judgment brief (which you can access by clicking here) for dismissal of Doe v. HBO, the lawsuit filed by a woman who once knew comedian Sacha Baron Cohen and claimed that Cohen, while playing the role of the television character, “Ali G,” libeled her by name during a spoof interview with historian Gore Vidal. Suing under the legal pseudonym, “Jane Doe,” the plaintiff claimed that Cohen, as “Ali G,” falsely claimed to have had sexual relations with her. In the brief drafted entirely in India, the defense argued as follows:

"No reasonable person could have believed the statements, given that they were made by what the plaintiff now admits is a 'fictional character,' in the context of a series of absurd and unbelievable jokes, in what she admits is a 'comedy,' where the actor never steps out of his fictional role. This is confirmed by the fact that the plaintiff has no evidence that anyone believed any of the statements, much less the statement at the core of this lawsuit, namely, that the plaintiff had sex with a fictional character. As a matter of California and U.S. constitutional law, such statements are not actionable."

Today, Judge Terry Friedman of the Los Angeles Superior Court, agreed. He ruled as follows:

“The Court viewed the excerpt from the Ali G program which is the basis for Plaintiff’s action. No reasonable person could consider the statements made by Ali G on the program to be factual. To the contrary, it is obvious that the Ali G character is absurd, and all his statements are gibberish and intended as comedy. The actor, Sacha Baron Cohen, never strays from the Ali G character, who is dressed in a ridiculous outfit and speaks in the exaggerated manner of a rap artist. Ali G’s statements are similarly absurd. For example, prior to the reference to Plaintiff, while ‘interviewing’ the author Gore Vidal, Ali G refers to the Constitution of the United States as having been written on two tablets, clearly intended to confuse the Constitution with the Ten Commandments. Altogether, the program is obviously a spoof of a serious interview program. No reasonable person could think otherwise.”
The Court also adopted two other legal arguments, drafted by SDD Global, which helped seal the fate of the plaintiff’s case.

As reported earlier in this blog, this case is historic, and not only because it is one of the first “libel-in-fiction” cases in the television context. The case is important also because it is the first high-profile, U.S. media litigation in which the legal research and first drafts of the motion papers for the defense were completed entirely off-shore, by Indian attorneys at a legal outsourcing company. The lead counsel for the defense, New York-based SmithDehn LLP, supervised the work and appeared in court on behalf of the moving party, Channel Four Television Corporation, the UK’s second largest television network, which incidentally developed and produced Slumdog Millionaire, The Crying Game, Trainspotting, The Last King of Scotland, and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Also present in the courtroom was Padma Shanthamurthy, SDD Global team leader, who traveled from her home in Mysore, India to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York to assist with oral arguments and depositions in the case.

Channel 4’s Prash Naik added: “US court actions are extremely costly to run, and even where a defendant wins, little if any of their costs are recoverable from the plaintiff. As so often happens in cases like this, the ‘chilling effect’ of the threat of substantial damages and significant legal costs, forces defendants to settle with plaintiffs who have no justifiable claim. However combining the skills and expertise of US attorneys with US law-trained Indian attorneys has proved to be an innovative and cost-effective way for Channel 4 to fight and win the suit.”

Sanjay Bhatia, SDD Global’s Head of Operations, emphasized that “this is a case where outsourcing created more work in the U.S., rather than less. Because our team made the defense affordable, U.S. lawyers were able to do the things in the U.S. that they do best there, such as strategizing, supervising, editing, and appearing in court. The implications of this case are huge. With legal outsourcing, baseless lawsuits can be defeated on the merits, instead of settled simply out of fear of legal fees.”

Larger Firms being necessitated to look at LPO

2009-03-28T00:38:00.002+05:30

The LegalEase blog has an 'unconventional' trend to report: that of larger law firms being adopters of LPO to differentiate themselves in the new workd - marred by financial unease. To quote:

The trend that we're seeing take root is that of large firms actively aligning with an LPO to then present their services to corporate counsel in a convergence that benefits each party. The large firm gains an advantage over their competitors with the significant savings the LPO provides; the LPO benefits by the association with well established domestic firms; and the in-house counsel enjoys the dual benefit of cost savings managed by a firm with whom they already have a business relationship.And it doesn't seem unreasonable to conclude that the driving force behind the trend is the recent financial crunch, which has forced corporate counsel to demand changes from the firms they traditionally hire.

I met a partner from a large law firm a few months ago whose straight question was: I don't have a doubt that LPO is good, but how do we (the firm) benefit from it? The answer, it appears, is easy to come by when competitive forces start to show up. Differentiate yourself.

LPO: The new survival kit for the law firms

2009-03-16T14:09:00.003+05:30

Martin L. Sandel, formerly a trial lawyer of more than 25 years experience, is President and CEO of SENDLAW.com. He in his article “Legal outsourcing-Politically correct? Or Politically Incorrect?” cites the example of three law firms that had to shut down because of exorbitant fees they demanded from their clients. As a result, a lot of attorneys were laid off as the companies couldn’t afford such high fees and eventually the law firms had to shut down some with a history of 118 years in the business.

The lawyers are generally perceived to be the custodians of traditions. And one of the age-old traditions appears to be making the clients pay heavily for services they offer. In this time of recession, cost-effectiveness is the mantra that people in the boardroom seem to be chanting. There isn’t evidence of Heller Ehrman, Thelen LLP and Thatcher, Proffitt & Wood LLP, three of the firms that had to close down, using legal offshoring. Compare this to some of the Magic Circle firms such as Clifford Chance that have gone ahead in embracing outsourcing, it is surprising to see that some legal firms harbor prejudices against the LPO industry.

Charles Darwin said “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Legal process outsourcing as Martin correctly points out is “another tool (like computers, word processing software, voice recognition technology, e-mail) to enhance efficiencies and improve the bottom line for law firms and their clients alike”. It is time that course of winds of change is understood and a serious objective analysis is undertaken to comprehend the benefits of the LPO industry and to make the best decision so that (sadly) the end result doesn’t come out to be a closure.

Hour and value billing: Excess dose a sure way to kill your business!

2009-02-27T08:58:00.003+05:30

There is an interesting write-up on the issue of hour billing exercise done by lawyers. The writer has used an excellent analogy to draw home the point that charging by hour is a sure way of driving your clients away from even the periphery of your office.

One needs to understand the fact that payment of services should be based on the value addition done by the service provider rather than the number of hours the person has spent in courtship with the project. Not to miss the point that value addition is to make customer delighted by the quality legal work and not stump him/her by the record of every second spent in making fancy labels under which he could be charged.

The client is the king. And I think that the king can be impressed when you can act as an advisor and tell him ways by which he can get the best out of every deal he strikes. So don-up your thinking caps to provide solutions to challenges in their business and let that separate you from other players in the field.

INDIAN LAWYERS DO IT AGAIN!

2009-02-25T12:02:00.002+05:30

Legal Outsourcing Team Drafts Major Brief in U.S. Litigation

You may recall from last year how a motion to dismiss, drafted entirely in India by SDD Global Solutions and Acumen Legal Services, resulted in a quick withdrawal of the anti-legal-outsourcing lawsuit, Newman McIntosh & Hennessey v. Bush, in Washington D.C. Federal Court.

Well, it looks like Team India is doing it again. Indian lawyers at SDD Global drafted, and are credited by name in, the summary judgment brief for dismissal of Doe v. HBO, a high-profile libel litigation in Los Angeles. For a copy of this excellent, page-turner of a brief, click here. The lawsuit was filed against Sacha Baron Cohen(of Borat fame), the Channel Four Television network, and HBO’s “Da Ali G Show.” In the case, a woman who once knew comedian Sacha Baron Cohen claims that Cohen, while playing the role of the television character, “Ali G,” libeled her by name during a spoof interview with historian Gore Vidal. Suing under the legal pseudonym, “Jane Doe,” the plaintiff claims that Cohen, as “Ali G,” falsely claimed to have had sexual relations with her. In the brief drafted entirely in India, the defense argues as follows:

"No reasonable person could have believed the statements, given that they were made by what the plaintiff now admits is a 'fictional character,' in the context of a series of absurd and unbelievable jokes, in what she admits is a 'comedy,' where the actor never steps out of his fictional role. This is confirmed by the fact that the plaintiff has no evidence that anyone believed any of the statements, much less the statement at the core of this lawsuit, namely, that the plaintiff had sex with a fictional character. As a matter of California and U.S. constitutional law, such statements are not actionable."

The case is historic, and not only because it is one of the first “libel-in-fiction” cases in the television context. The case is important also because it is the first high-profile, U.S. media litigation in which the legal research and first drafts of the motion papers for the defense were completed entirely off-shore, by Indian attorneys at a legal outsourcing company. The lead counsel for the defense, New York-based SmithDehn LLP, supervised the work and appeared in court on behalf of the moving party, Channel Four Television Corporation (which, incidentally, developed and produced Slumdog Millionaire). Also present in the courtroom was Padma Shanthamurthy, SDD Global team leader, who traveled from her home in Mysore, India to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York to assist with oral arguments and depositions in the case.

One of SmithDehn’s founders, veteran media lawyer and Harvard Law School graduate Frank Dehn, told this blog that “without legal outsourcing, mounting a defense against this baseless lawsuit would not have made economic sense. As so often happens, the defendants simply would have paid the plaintiff to go away. This would have been just to avoid U.S. legal fees, even though the case has no merit. But with a team of excellent, U.S. law-trained, Indian attorneys doing most of the work, it was less expensive for our client to fight the suit, than it would have been to settle.”

Sanjay Bhatia, SDD Global’s Head of Operations, emphasized that “this is a case where outsourcing created more work in the U.S., rather than less. Because our team made the defense affordable, U.S. lawyers were able to do the things in the U.S. that they do best there, such as strategizing, supervising, editing, and appearing in court. The implications of this case are huge. With legal outsourcing, baseless lawsuits can be defeated on the merits, instead of settled simply out of fear of legal fees.”

Kudos to the "Ali G" team in India, a decision on the "Ali G" motion is expected in late April. Stay tuned!

White Paper - LegalEase Solutions: Ethical Imperatives in an LPO (Part I: Conflict checking)

2009-02-19T01:21:00.005+05:30

LegalEase Solutions has started a novel and much appreciated series of whitepapers on Ethical considerations for those involved in procuring and providing LPO services. Here is the first part in this series which relates to controls for conflict checking in an LPO vendor's operations.

Legal Process Outsourcing companies supplement both in-house and firm-based attorneys by performing a variety of legal services – including legal research and writing, deposition summaries, contract and document drafting and reviewing, pre-litigation support, drafting of memorandum, preparation of trial and appellate-level pleadings and briefs, and discovery and patent services.

Bar committees in New York City, Los Angeles County, and San Diego County have all ruled that "lawyers may contract with foreign lawyers not admitted to practice in any jurisdiction in the United States… to perform legal work for U.S. clients."1

As increasing numbers of in-house counsel and firm-based attorneys evaluate the significant cost savings offered by LPOs, they must also factor into consideration an LPO’s commitment to thoroughly upholding the ethical obligations lawyers implicitly owe their clients. Because, while utilizing an LPO may result in efficiencies and significant cost savings, those benefits are meaningless if the outsourcing results in an ethical breach such as conflicts of interest.

Conflicts of Interest
A conflict of interest can generally be defined as a situation where a person in a position of trust (such as a lawyer) has actual or potential competing interests (professional or personal) that make it difficult for that person to fulfill his/her duties to a client in an impartial manner.
In the legal profession, a law firm is prohibited, by the duty of loyalty owed to a client, from representing any other party with interests that are adverse to those of any current client. The most common example of this is the fact that the same law firm will not represent opposing parties in a case. The actual or even potential existence of a conflict of interest can create an appearance of impropriety, undermining the client’s confidence in the firm.

Conflict Checking
In terms of legal process outsourcing, the New York City Bar’s statement opined that "[a]s a threshold matter, the outsourcing …lawyer should ask the intermediary, which employs or engages an overseas non-lawyer, about its conflict checking procedures and about how it tracks work performed for other clients." 2

When evaluating the value of an intermediary LPO, one of the primary concerns expressed by in-house and firm-based counsel alike is the avoidance of conflicts of interest. Attorneys know that conflict checking can be substantial even within a single firm, so there is legitimate cause for consideration when contemplating employing an LPO that could potentially be providing similar services to a number of firms. This is why it is imperative for an LPO – as both a duty of loyalty and as a professional tenant – to design and implement comprehensive conflict checking systems.

Internal Protocol
Before an LPO even enters into conversations with counsel, the LPO should have an initial foundation in place to ensure ethical conduct. This starts with education and training in conflict avoidance for each employee, onshore and offshore.

Training should include an employee handbook with written protocol emphasizing the ethical requirements for conflict avoidance. And while a thorough overview is the first part of the internal foundation, it is of little value without a proactive policy for conflict disclosure. providing the legal edge

The protocol for disclosure should cast a wide net, requiring disclosure on any actual or possible conflict of interest from any employee assigned to a project. This disclosure requirement should include the existence of any actual or potential conflicting interest, whether personal or professional. Any such disclosure must be made at the beginning of the project or as soon as the actual or potential conflict is recognized.

Information Collection
"A legal outsourcing company should have a conflicts checking procedure in place that… includes avoidance of a concurrent conflict of interest with a client already engaged, and avoidance of a significant risk that the representation of one client may be materially limited by responsibilities to another client."3

Once the value of distributing work to an LPO as been established, it is vital for both the LPO and the client’s counsel to ensure sufficient communication to allow for viable conflict checking.

To achieve this level of communication, it is helpful to have a tool in place at the outset to gather high level information and keywords (ranging from the clients’ business names and principal names, to client subsidiary or parent companies, to business sectors, to the nature of the legal proceeding). A detailed Work Product Request Form can collect these high level keywords and allow for more thorough conflict checking.

Of course, non-disclosure agreements should be in place with every employee of an LPO to allow the client’s counsel to comfortably provide enough searchable data to avoid conflicts.

Electronic Referencing
"A law firm shall keep records of prior engagements… and shall have a policy implementing a system by which proposed engagements are checked against current and previous engagements…"4 providing the legal edge

Data from the Work Product Request Forms should then be used to populate and maintain a searchable database with keywords and summaries of each client and case.
As an alternative to custom databases, many time and billing software programs contain a conflict of interest functionality. When evaluating a time and billing software program, an LPO should thoroughly QA the conflict checking functionality.

Summarization
Legal Process Outsourcing companies are doubly indebted – to the client and to the client’s counsel – to uphold ethical standards. Conflict checking should be thoroughly pursued by employing internal measures (training, written protocols, and non-disclosure agreements), detailed work process request forms to capture searchable data, and effective electronic referencing via project databases or time/billing software programs.

1 Steven J. Mintz, Ethics Opinions Allow Foreign Legal Outsourcing, ABA Litig. News Online, July 2007, at: http://www.abanet.org/litigation/litigationnews/2007/july/0707_article_outsourcing.html providing the legal edge

2 NYCBA, Formal Op. 2006-3

3 American Bar Association Model Rule of Professional Conduct 1.7.

4 DR 5 – 105(E), New York Lawyers Code of Ethical Responsibility

Press Release: Clutch Group Embraces New Law Opening India to Foreign Law Firms

2009-02-19T01:16:00.001+05:30

WASHINGTON, D.C. (February 17th, 2009) India’s newly enacted Limited Liability Partnership Act permits increased involvement by international law firms in the Indian legal market. Section 59 of the LLP Act allows foreign law firms to establish a place of business within India.

India could become one of the fastest growing legal markets in the world

“Although foreign lawyers still may not practice law in India, the Indian government has taken an essential first step in opening the country’s legal market,.” says Abhi Shah CEO of Clutch Group, a global legal solutions company. “This change will enable foreign law firms to lay the foundation for future offices in India. The LLP Act could transform India’s legal market into one of the fasting growing in the world.”

“Clutch Group helps clients navigate the new landscape”

In Shah’s view, “This legislation has important implications for legal outsourcing companies, and Clutch Group is positioned to benefit as foreign law firms focus on India.” Several of Clutch Group’s more than 50 AmLaw clients have already inquired about how Clutch Group can help navigate the new landscape. Shah says, “There is a bond of trust between Clutch Group and its law firm clients. They rely on us to understand the politics, business and ethics of India as they pursue new opportunities there.”

Clutch Group is broadening its focus to facilitate collaboration between Indian and foreign law firms made possible by the LLP Act. Shah points out that “Clutch Group’s skilled attorney workforce and sophisticated operational infrastructure will provide valuable support as a local partner on the ground for foreign law firms.”

A 1995 court ruling had blocked foreign legal practices

Legal experts say it is too early to assess the full impact of the new government policy. However, it is presumed that additional regulations must be put in place before any foreign law firms establish operations in India.
A 1995 order by the Bombay High Court restrained foreign law firms from setting up shop in India and it remains a controversial issue.
In the early nineties, some international firms had set up ‘liaison offices’ in India. However a lack of clear regulations for foreign attorneys and pressure from their clients to do more legal work here, led to friction with Indian lawyers. This culminated in a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) brought by the Lawyers’ Collective. A provisional ruling of the Bombay High Court in 1995 declared that Indian advocates not only had exclusive rights of audience in the Indian courts, but also a monopoly of advising on any law, Indian or foreign, in India. The High Court decision made it clear that establishing a firm for rendering legal assistance and/or for executing documents, negotiations and settlements of documents would certainly amount to practice of law.

About Clutch Group

Clutch Group is a global provider of legal solutions, with expertise in cost-effective litigation document review, compliance, contract management, and legal research services, to Fortune 500 clients and leading global law firms. Clutch Group ranks as the #1 Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) firm worldwide in the 2008 Black Book of Outsourcing and is listed as the top legal outsourcing company by Dun & Bradstreet. Clutch Group's workforce comprises more than 300 attorneys and paralegals across the United States and India. The company is led by a team with legal expertise, extensive domestic and offshore outsourcing experience, and superior law firm management skills

Press Release: Clutch Group Embraces New Law Opening India to Foreign Law Firms

2009-02-19T01:16:00.000+05:30

Press Release: Legal Circle appoints industry veterans to further solidify its presence in the LPO space

2009-02-13T23:19:00.001+05:30

New Delhi, 9th February, 2009 - Legal Circle, a leading legal process outsourcing organization, today announced the appointment of Kenneth Gunning, US Attorney as Vice President – Operations, Legal Circle and Edward Turner as the Director, U.S Operations for Legal Circle.

This is a part of well thought out expansion plans in its operations while announcing the strategic appointments of industry veterans to provide further impetus to its growth plans.

Kenneth is a US attorney and a pioneer in the litigation support industry, brings with him extensive experience in all aspects of the litigation vertical including electronic discovery, document review and information management. While Edward, a retired Senior Partner with Shearman and Sterling’s Asian practice, has a wealth of experience in the field of mergers and acquisitions, private equity, project development and project finance in Asian markets. He would be combining his previous experiences in the industry at various top positions for furthering LegalCircle’s business interests in U.S market which has huge potential for the legal industry.

In Legal Circle, Kenneth will be responsible for management and quality control of Document Review Services of the company for its clients while Edward in his role will leverage his extensive experience and focus on consolidating and growing the company’s outsourcing client-base. He will bring to the company vast experience as a consultative business development executive with strong relationships at major corporations and law firms.

With their combined wealth of experience, both Kenneth and Edward will be instrumental in strengthening the company’s leadership across globe.

This strategic appointments are part of company’s strategy in expanding its operations in the US market as well as bringing the quality excellence in Document review services.

Elaborating on the strategic announcement, FM Legal Circle Services CEO, Mr Soumitro Chatterjee, said: ‘‘The Appointment of Kenneth & Edward comes well in time & marks a significant step for Legal Circle, as the company expands its presence & reinforces its commitment to provide the clients with best-in-class legal outsource processing solutions. I’m looking forward to work with them to ensure that Legal Circle maximizes its potential to deliver exceptional value to its global client base’’

LegalCircle is promoted by India’s most respected and largest law firm, FoxMandal Little, and has huge expansion plans in 2009.and is well committed to offer best of services to the clients. who wishes to shift their business focus from onshore to offshore legal outsourcing.

Kenneth spent the last three years performing and supervising document reviews with the nations leading law firms, including: Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom ,Kirkland & Ellis; Shearman & Sterling; Weil, Gotshal & Manges; Latham & Watkins; Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson; and Boies, Schiller & Flexner while Mr. Turner has recently been ranked as a leading lawyer in HongKong – AsiaLaw 2005-06 as well as a leading individual in International’s Who’sWho of Business Lawyers – 2006 apart from many other professional recognitions and awards.

About Legal Circle

Legal Circle is a subsidiary firm of Fox Mandal which has been extensively doing the Legal Process Outsourcing work for the major global and Indian clients.

Legal circle offers its clients; end to end legal services like Legal research, Legal Drafting, Patent Services, Litigation Support, Document review etc. It possesses highly skilled team of Indian,US attorneys and engineers, who are providing “end to end” solutions with their expertise, across a large spectrum of intellectual property support services for multinational corporates, law departments and international law firms. Legal Circle also specialized in 'Client Management System' (CMS) which constantly helps to monitor the daily progress of each projects undertaken and meet strict target deadlines. For further information visit: www.legalcircle.com

Personnel News: Bruce Campbell Joins SDD Global

2009-02-13T23:11:00.001+05:30

Bruce Campbell, Executive Director at SDD Global, is a specialist in corporate finance and intellectual property transactions. Bruce started his practice as an attorney at Hogan & Hartson, one of the world’s largest international law firms, where he worked for six years. Inspired by his entrepreneurial clients, Bruce opened his own firm in February 2003. After experiencing the work of SDD Global first hand as a client, and after spending time with us at our headquarters in Mysore, India, Bruce decided to join our company and further develop its capabilities. In his ten years of legal practice, Bruce has helped to form and finance numerous companies. He has guided many early stage companies through mergers, acquisitions and initial public offerings. His intellectual property experience includes representing clients in transactions with some of the most well known names in technology. He has provided advice on intellectual property transactions with companies located in Asia and Europe. He graduated with honors from the George Washington University Law School and summa cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh. He was a member of the George Washington Journal of International Law and Economics. While pursuing his undergraduate degree, Bruce studied at the University of Paris, La Sorbonne and the Institute for European and Asian studies in Paris, France.

LPO means business and opportunity

2009-02-09T12:07:00.002+05:30

LPO industry comes across as a silver lining amidst economic slowdown and companies going out of business. With U.S. and European companies busy devising effective cost cutting measures without compromising the quality, Indian legal outsourcing industry stands to reap many benefits. A large pool of quality lawyers and engineers; the Indian legal system, which is common with that of U.S. and U.K.; exhaustive academic infrastructure; ability of some established LPO companies to scale-up operations in cost-effective manner; and certifications such as ISO 9001 (Quality Management System) and ISO 27001 (Information Security) attained by some of the Indian LPOs are some of the factors that add to their attractiveness for the U.S. and European markets. Forrester research projected that legal outsourcing to India will reach $4bn by 2015. This increase in legal outsourcing business has translated into two major challenges for the LPO industry. First, identifying what is being called the ‘employable’ talent among the tens of thousands of lawyers graduating every year and the second is retention of the best and the brightest – the ‘human capital.’

The work done in LPOs ranges from relatively simple legal tasks, such as document or contract review, to the more strategic and complex work such as patent intelligence and monetization, contract drafting etc. Therefore, there are different requirements of skill and expertise for the different activities that fall under the purview of LPO, as it stands now. From paralegals to lawyers to engineers and now even doctors and bio-chemists are hired by these firms to fulfill job requirements. Companies are using different techniques to get the best talent and be the first ones to grab the opportunity to utilize this talent for business success. Some of them are going directly to the campuses while others are using internal referral programs for recruitment. For example, CPA Global by its internal job posting program (IJP) offers opportunities to employees for lateral & vertical career advancement and development & learning through a transparent process of internal job posting & selection that would ensure fair and healthy competition. Once the step of recruitment of an individual is completed, an employee friendly company, and LPO companies are no different, needs to chalk out a plan for retention of this ‘human capital’ so acquired.

It is not uncommon to notice stories in the media about attractive careers offered by the LPO industry to engineers and lawyers in India. These careers because of aspects like dynamic environment, lively culture, career growth and opportunities, continuous learning and challenges excite young graduates (or post graduates and even doctorates) who want to achieve their dream job. One thing that needs to be focused on is the fact that the industry is in its growing stage. In other words, it is neither too young to have doubts about its future nor too old to worry about sustained growth. The growth from nadir to zenith is happening at a phenomenal pace. This has resulted in an environment where talent, out-of-the-box thinking and zeal to make a difference have become the most valued attributes. Bhaskar Bagchi, Country head of CPA Global – an LPO Company, in one of his interviews used the phrase “culture of empowerment”. The term captures the essence of companies who know that the present generation cannot be bounded by the chains of a bureaucratic system. In any given setup, challenges require courage and creativity. The present generation thrives on both of these attributes in a job. And, with the LPO industry surging ahead to expand across global jurisdictions, the need for these qualities cannot be direr as it is in the present situation. What they both should understand that only a symbiotic relationship can bring the growth of an individual as well as the company as a whole. It means that “Employee” and the “Company” stand on the same platform. Legal service providers do acknowledge this philosophy. CPA Global in India in keeping up with the demand of the time and creating a relation of equals, between the management and the employee, involved every single person in the making of its vision statement. Phenomenal isn’t it! Thus, every employee becomes a part of the decision-making process and responsible for the same. In this egalitarian setup, every person feels free to think about his/her career graph and opportunities for moving ahead within the company.

Career mobility in the LPO sector is rapid due to a galore of opportunities available to employees to prove their mettle in their respective fields. Separate departments have been created in HR section of the company that takes care of employee growth within an organization. Many law graduates have within few years become AVPs of their respective business verticals. This has been the case with engineers as well. What makes it possible? The reason behind it is that more than 80% of the workforce is constituted by people falling under the age group of 25–35 years. This young and dynamic junta makes the think tank of the company. With their entrepreneurial spirit at the right place and global market opening up, they are exposed to many challenges as well as devise mind boggling ways to deal with them. Every challenge thus becomes an opportunity to define one’s own career graph and give it the desired shape. This kind of a prospect is missing in other industries and careers. For example, in a corporate legal department any new entry takes at least 3–5 years just to get into the groove of operations. Less gestation period coupled with continuous learning opportunities makes a career in an LPO an appealing option.

Learning and development is one of the very crucial aspects of this industry. Candidates after they join the company are made to undergo rigorous training that spans from concepts such as punctuality and time management to intricacies about patent laws, legal research, contract drafting and other key areas. UnitedLex has its lawyers evaluated regularly. CPA Global in India has a separate department for learning and development. It makes the training contract for each employee according to which in a financial year 4.5 man days are completely devoted to honing up their skills or guiding them. U.S. patent attorneys are flown to India to train the lawyers and review their work. Such endeavors not only prove beneficial for the employee but also increase productivity and quality of the deliverables by the team. Interest in the well being of the employee is alone not the concern of the company but also of the client who is outsourcing his/her work. Microsoft, client of CPA Global, flies small groups of CPA Global employees to Redmond in order to know more about the people who work with them.

In all, alluring opportunities, equipping the employees with right set of skills and facing the challenges is what the LPO work profile has to offer in the long run.

Indian legal market attracts the Magic circle firms

2009-01-22T19:52:00.001+05:30

Clifford Chance is planning to have a tie-up with Indian company AZB & Partners. This business proposal is an indicator of the growing interest seen in British legal firms about entering the Indian legal market. Allen & Overy, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Linklaters already have tie-ups with the Indian firms Trilegal, Bharucha & Partners and Talwar Thakore & Associates, respectively.

Such associations appear to have a dual impact on the Indian economy. In addition to aiding the practice of the Indian entity, such relationships in a way help bring in foreign investment to India, which in turn helps maintain economic growth at 7%.

One might argue that if foreign investment boosts the growth of the Indian economy, then the Indian government needs to ensure that it encourages more of such investment by opening up the legal sector for overseas firms. This should help attract many more US and European law firms which are known to be eager to setup direct presence in India. Benefits emanating from this include access to superior legal support to Indian corporations willing to expand practice overseas, quality employment to the tens of thousands of legal graduates passing out each year, and improved competitiveness of the Indian legal sector. With far reaching benefits like these appearing achievable, it should only be a matter of time that someone in the Law Ministry gets the logic, and soon!

2008: More than a 100 law firms and Legal Departments used LPO

2009-01-19T19:22:00.005+05:30

The survey with the question, “Which service are you outsourcing/ considering to outsource/ supporting?” ran for one year on this blog. The picture above shows the results. About half of the respondents chose Legal Research and Contract Review/Drafting/Management as the service of interest to them. About 35% showed interest in IP offshoring and a similar percentage in Document Review and eDiscovery. Immigration Services support, Secretarial Services support within the legal community and other custom services (I guess document indexing, coding and tagging etc.) found interest among about 15% of the respondents.

Using estimations on the visitors and co-relation to proportion of visitors actually participating in the survey it appears that more than a 100 Law firms and a 100 Legal Departments participated in the survey. The other participants include LPO employees (about 80) and some other curious participants.

Even the interest from 200 law firms and legal departments (combined) is a phenomenon worth mentioning. On a conservative side too, it would be safe to assume that at least half of these companies are already engaged in offshoring of legal work. Confidentiality will bar reporting the names of such law firms and companies but an analysis on the blog visitors reveals that these law firms include the biggest of the names all the way thru to the smallest of law firms. Smaller law firms have been more agile in using LPO while the bigger law firms have been cautious but exploratory nonetheless. Corporations using legal offshoring probably are more homogeneously spread-out, perhaps companies with $100m+ in revenues are better equipped to embracing (or more in need of) LPO.

This blog invites you to confidentially participate in the new survey (see right panel): What was your estimated spending on offshore legal work in 2008?

Press Release: CPA Global marks 40th anniversary with launch of new brand

2009-01-19T18:21:00.002+05:30

CPA Global marks 40th anniversary with launch of new brand

Reflects strong international growth and successful diversification of world’s leading IP management specialist and legal support services firm

Jersey/New Delhi, 12th January 2009 - CPA Global, the world’s top intellectual property (IP) management specialist and a leading provider of outsourced legal support services, has today marked its 40th anniversary year with the launch of a new brand worldwide.

Founded in 1969 as a specialist IP firm in Jersey, Channel Islands, CPA Global is today a global organisation of more than 1,200 people, providing a wide range of IP and legal support services to clients in over 100 countries.

Formerly known as CPA (from its original name of Computer Patent Annuities), the group has grown over the years through a combination of acquisition and organic growth. However, from today, group businesses around the world have been brought together under the single unifying brand name, CPA Global, with a bright and modern new look on all stationery, materials and signage.

Bhaskar Bagchi, Country Head (India), CPA Global said:

“2009 is a key milestone for CPA Global as we celebrate our 40th year of operations. We have come a long way over the past four decades. We have grown the scale of our business, diversified the scope of our offerings and significantly expanded our international reach - and we are continuing to grow and evolve. The new CPA Global brand better reflects the global nature of our business, the diversity of our service offerings and the innovative solutions we deliver to our clients across the world.

“By adopting a single global brand, we are underlining our commitment to our clients that the service they receive from CPA Global in any business, in any office anywhere in the world is of the same high level that they have come to expect from us. The brand is built on a clear and simple vision: Realising value for our clients and helping them succeed. This means putting clients at the centre of everything we do, understanding and anticipating their needs, and making it easier and more rewarding for them to do business with us”, added Mr. Bagchi.

Rob Stichbury, CPA Global’s business development director said:

“We intend to enhance the value of CPA Global as the company enters and evolves into new markets by positioning the brand as a ‘global’ leader that offers best-in-class services and solutions to clients worldwide. We believe that this new brand identity will allow us to be better recognized for our contributions and strengthen our overall position in the marketplace in addition to be identified as an organisation that protects company value, highlights key differentiators and enhances market competitiveness.”

“The intertwined rings that are displayed in the new logo symbolise a number of things- First of all, the globe and our global reach; secondly, our numerous businesses around the world coming together and being unified as one company and, thirdly, the strong relationship between CPA Global, our law firm clients and corporate clients”, added Mr. Stichbury.

CPA Global has worked with two London-based agencies on the rebranding exercise. Dragon was responsible for the design and development of the brand concept, while Westhill Communications has been tasked with brand implementation, taking the brand concept and developing a suite of branded materials and collateral. CPA Global’s focus on realising value for its clients - who include some of the world’s best known corporations and law firms - is visually represented through a series of image pairs, demonstrating raw materials being transformed into added value finished products.

Press Release: Lawwave Makes a Play: Sets Sights on Improving the LPO Market

2009-01-19T18:14:00.002+05:30

Lawwave, located in New York City and Chennai, launched its new website (www.lawwave.com) detailing its services, its team and its new location in Chennai. Ranked #5 by the “Blackbook of Outsourcing”, Lawwave has set its sights on vastly increasing the overall market and its own market share as a result of the company’s dedicated commitment to raising the quality of work performed by Indian attorneys in the offshore market.

“Part of the problem with the current offshore model is that American firms are concerned about the quality of the work performed by Indian attorneys,” says Sumeet Nath, co-founder of Lawwave. “We’ve created the industry leading training program to ensure not only our clients, but the clients of any LPO provider, that we as an industry are committed to raising the bar by delivering the same quality services that American firms and corporations expect.”

Lawwave’s impressive three week training program focuses on American style legal writing, legal research and the American legal system. In addition, the program stresses patent research, contracts and comparisons of the common law.

“The fact is that Indian lawyers have all the tools they need to partner with their American counterparts, except this type of training. India provides a large, educated and eager legal workforce with a similar grounding in the common law. With one training session under my belt, I’m hoping I’ll be able to make the upcoming session even better than those we held in fall of last year” states Aaron Golembiewski, Managing Attorney and Chief Knowledge Officer with Lawwave. Golembiewski continues, “My vision is that this training program not only provides Indian attorneys with the skills they need to succeed in the LPO industry, but also with skills they can utilize in their own practices in India.”

Lawwave’s training program will be held in Chennai from January 23rd until February 12th, Delhi from February 6th to the 26th and Bangalore from February 13th to March 5th. More information on Lawwave and its training program may be found at www.lawwave.com.

For further press inquiries, please contact Aaron Golembiewski at aarong@lawwave.com

IGNOU launches PG Diploma in LPO

2009-01-09T10:58:00.001+05:30

PG Diploma in LPO, launched by IGNOU on 23rd December, speaks volumes about the growth, job viability and demand of human resource in the legal outsourcing industry.

Legal services sector has in recent years grown multifold. It is expected to employ 15,000 individuals in the next 2 years. A PG diploma in this scenario will be able to train the lawyer with the nuances of the sector and make him/her better understand the dynamics on which it operates. This program is a joint effort of IGNOU’s School of Law and legal talent management house Rainmaker. It would commence from Feb. 2009. The expert guidance of Prof. Dr. N.R. Madhava Menon, founder director of the National Law Universities in Bengaluru and Kolkatta, and of the National Judicial Academy, Bhopal, observations of senior representatives of leading L.P.Os and respected members of Indian legal academia have worked together to make this course knowledge rich and corporate viable.

The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) was established in September 1985 for promotion of quality distance education. The major objectives of this university is to provide higher accessibility of quality education in far flung areas, programs of continuing education, and initiating projects that cater to needs of specific target sections of the population such as women, physically challenged and other minority groups of the society.

Rainmaker is one of the best legal talent management and training organization in India. It caters to the needs of the legal industry by providing services such as executive search and training products tailored according to the demands of the companies.

IGNOU’s step towards providing industry specific knowledge for the LPOs is one of the many steps from which the industry can benefit by having an access to the rich talent base of India. The young demographic profile of India coupled with its rigorous education system and institutions with good reputation in the world’s education arena makes the country the most likeable option for outsourcing. Some of the other reasons according to the ValueNotes survey such as, “large scale cross border transactions, significant financial implications, challenges in transfer of intellectual property, and other domestic legal ramifications” will lead to an upsurge of demand for legal services. In view of this demand “the employee count is expected to reach 55,000 by 2012”. Thereby, it becomes imperative to have the knowledge about the sector and promote its’ further advancement.The nexus between education and business sector is close knit. Each has to understand other’s needs and accordingly plan the future plan of action. For example, IT boom in India saw innumerable computer centers mushrooming in every street corner providing software skills, which were tailored for the industry. With the way the growth graph of the LPO sector is moving up it would be no surprise if history repeats itself!

India - answer to woes of corporate America

2009-01-08T18:00:00.000+05:30

In response to the article “Analysis: Legal Process Outsourcing: just hot air?”, posted by the ALB Legal News, The Posse list has written a write-up that speaks in detail the extent of legal outsourcing business as well as the money involved in the Indian legal outsourcing market.

U.S. MNCs constitute the biggest slice of the clientele for Indian LPOs. Conglomerates such as Microsoft, Dupont, General Motors, FMC Technologies, Philips etc. are all doing direct LPO business in India. In other words, these companies are directly involved with their respective vendors without the involvement of the law firms. Cost savings seems to be the main instigator for driving the interest in the Indian market. According to the Fullbright & Jaworski client study, 90% of the U.S. companies are involved in some or the other form of litigation with the average of 37 lawsuits at any given time. About 10% of study participants said that legal spending amounts to approximately 5% of the company’s revenues. Thus the companies with a turnover of $1bn will have their legal fees as $50mn. Thereby, no rocket science is needed to understand the fact that a market which can provide services of the same quality and in a cost-effective manner will be a gold mine for them. India with its young, dynamic and diligent workforce trained in the common law is undoubtedly the best outsourcing option.

Corporate America in the present scenario is seeking for ways to put a check on its incurred costs without compromising on the quality as well as the security of the information. Both these aspects can be achieved by Indian LPOs using some ingenuity and an understanding of their client concerns. Certifications such as ISO and Six Sigma can help in fostering trust among the clients with respect to our way of operations and our comprehensibility of the seriousness of the situation. India is the store house of human capital, what is needed is the right direction for utilizing it.

2009: What lies ahead for Indian LPO Companies?

2009-01-08T17:58:00.002+05:30

Beginning of a year is always marked with speculations, predictions, plan of actions, strategies and above all hope for a better future ahead.

2009 for LPOs in India is one such year that will probably be filled with more business and hence more profits. If figures are considered to be a reliable source for a factual depiction of the reality, then the estimates given by Forrester Research project a boom for the legal outsourcing sector. They have estimated that legal outsourcing to India will reach $4bn by 2015. In fact till 2007, according to ValueNotes calculations, spending on legal offshoring to India had reached $124mn. Now companies are paying attention to not only the gross figures of the industry but also to the nuances involved in its’ functioning. An indicator for this growing interest is the attendance level seen in the annual meeting of Association of Corporate Counsel in which two sessions were on offshoring. There were only few vacant seats! With ABA’s positive opinion about offshoring of legal work also coming in 2008, the offshore providers of legal support services couldn’t ask for more.

The seismic waves of these events have affected Indian LPOs in a big way. India is the most popular destination for offshore services. Owing to its huge talent base, time zone and favorable government policies, Indian companies have always received good business from their offshore clients. The subprime crisis in the U.S., which has negatively impacted the world economy, is bringing exodus of work to the LPOs, thus, generating windfall gains for the Indian LPO firms. This marked increase in the business is not only because of the economic pricing of the services by the vendor but also attributed to the quality given by them. Companies such as CPA have achieved ISO 9001:27001 quality management system (QMS) certification and ISO/IEC 27001:2005 information security management certification (ISM) certification. These international standards are accepted by all and provide a framework for consistent and effective quality management. Such steps have encouraged the companies to outsource more than the low-end or routine work to the offshore units. Microsoft had started with proof reading of patent applications in 2004. They have with time increased the technical and critical level of their outsourced jobs. Martin Shivley, Associate General Counsel, Director, Worldwide Intellectual Property Operations Microsoft, decided on the basis of quality, time delivery, cost-effective and other aspects to offshore their other tasks. In India they are working with CPA, headquartered in Jersey Chanel Islands, which has now also been given to perform invalidity studies and patent landscape analyses.

The recent economic slump down has brought in a lot of litigation work. As a result one can witness the human resource departments of the companies busy round the clock in hiring and retaining their employees. There is a prospective demand of 15,000 jobs in the legal outsourcing sector in the coming 2 years. UnitedLex Vice President, HR, Rakhi Sharma, intends to hire 800 people by March 2009. Bhaskar Bagchi, country head, CPA has set the target of 2,000 employees by 2010. Even the average salary benchmark has increased by an average of 30–45%. To control attrition rates companies are devising new and innovative ways to retain their workforce. Bagchi said “At CPA, we handed out bonuses and increments, starting at 15% and upwards. For 2009, we have a healthy order book and the benefits will only get better for employees.”

Overall, we can say that new avenues, increased business, more emphasis on quality and employee centric policies would be the areas of focus for the Indian LPOs in 2009. Wish you all a happy working and successful new year!

-Megha Pande

LPOs in India march ahead

2008-12-18T14:54:00.003+05:30

Richard Susskind, author of “The End of Lawyers?”, in his article “Turning to India at break-neck speed” talks about the research conducted by RSG Consulting and the reasons behind increasing business diverted to LPOs.

The report makes the following points:
1. 10 of England’s top 30 law firms have outsourced back office functions or legal work to India.
2. Although the legal market is evolving at break-neck speed there is a dearth of experience and attrition rates are high.
3. Purchasing power of general counsel in India has increased.
4. Shift in the attitude of top English firms with respect to outsourcing – resistance weakening considerably.
5. Huge difference in salaries meted out to Indian legal graduates by Indian LPO companies and to qualified associates by Wall Street firms.
6. Not only law firms but also the clients that they used to serve are outsourcing legal work.

Richard in the write-up attributes the change in attitude to the clients who are pressurizing in-house legal departments and law firms to cut costs and internal head counts. This has led to devising ways of reducing expenditure on back office and administration such as IT, finance and document production. Outsourcing, thus, becomes the most likeable option for reducing expenses on the infrastructure. Even when outsourcing legal work such as legal research, document review in litigation or due diligence for corporate work, LPO companies have proved to be a viable option. These companies rely on well-developed standards and systems and have reduced labor costs in delivering routine and repetitive legal work – resulting in cheaper legal services.

The author perceives the scene of legal support services to be positive for Indian LPO markets and a continuous increase in their revenues.

Legal outsourcing:a reliable answer to law firms and corporations

2008-12-18T14:43:00.004+05:30

The article “India Work Grows, With Glitches” by Julie Kay gives an overview of the legal outsourcing industry in India and enumerates the concerns currently faced by law firms and companies worldwide.

According to Forrester research, legal outsourcing to India will reach $4bn by 2015. The figure summarizes the changes witnessed in the past couple of years. The market has grown phenomenally owing to pressure from corporate counsel on law firms to reduce costs. Also, the favorable bar opinions have encouraged corporations and law firms to explore the benefits of outsourcing some of the legal support work. Even the profile of work handled by LPOs has changed from “back-office work” to intellectual property, legal research, contract and conflict review and litigation support. Thus, it has now become imperative for law firms to address their respective interests and reexamine all aspects of outsourcing.

The write-up talks about firms such as Baker& McKenzie; Greenberg Traurig; Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & Mc Cloy; and Shapiro Sher Guinot & Sandler, which are plagued by questions related to legal outsourcing, things such as maintenance of quality control, confidential nature of client information, supervision of lawyers located at different geographical points and other difficulties such as terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

Terrorism has in today’s world become a rampant problem. No country is spared from its detrimental negative effects. “Terrorism can happen anywhere”, said Jeffrey Bailey, associate general counsel for Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. Having said that, the article stresses on the point that outsourcing companies cannot ignore lingering apprehensions about “… not only whether their (our) information is secure but whether there could be disruption to their (our) service”.

Among the key benefits of legal outsourcing to an offshore location such as India are access to a huge talent base trained in common law, ability to scale up operations in a cost-effective manner, ability to benefit from principles of operations management such a ISO 9001 and Six Sigma when applied to legal support services, effecting a 24-hour work day and provisioning relatively simple legal tasks such as document or contract review from a willing workforce unlike new associates who perceive these tasks to be mundane. However, these advantages are desired only when accompanied with high quality services being offered.

Julie Kay gives the example of Greenberg Traurig that has recently outsourced a limited amount of IP work. Its focus is “to deliver the highest quality legal services as cost-effectively as possible” to its clients. In order to achieve this they have done some pilot projects using offshore resources.

Lately, outsourcing industry gained further momentum from recent favorable Bar ethics opinions, from the San Diego Bar Association in 2007, the Florida Bar in January 2008, the North Carolina State Bar in April 2008 and the American Bar Association in August 2008. All are in unison in the thought that outsourcing is allowed, provided certain pre-requisites are met, including notification to the client and supervision of the foreign lawyers by U.S. lawyers.

As a final comment to disquietude regarding offshoring, the article mentions step taken for its mitigation. People like William Byrnes, assistant dean at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, are involved in developing an LPO certification program along with American Academy of Financial Management. This and more will help in answering the questions still in the minds of those deliberating about benefiting from legal outsourcing.

US LPO spending to be $2 bn in 2013

2008-12-18T14:38:00.000+05:30

Ron Friedman on the basis of a survey, “The Change Agenda: Looking Ahead”, conducted by Rees Morrison and Aric Press has come to a deduction that U.S. LPO spending in 2013 will be almost $2bn.
Rees Morrison and Aric Press have in their analysis touched on various facets of changes seen in the legal spending departments of different firms. They surveyed in-house lawyers by a questionnaire posted on LegalOnRamp, a professional networking site. (The complete survey results can be found at surveymonkey.com). 84 respondents were chosen who work in companies that have earnings of at least $1bn. The issues examined were varied in nature, such as hiring of new law firms, basis of law department’s spending on outside counsel, extent of law department’s spending on offshore service providers, location of internal headcount in lower cost geographies, spending on legal automation, e-discovery spending, extent of telecommuting and impact of social networking for selecting and communicating with outside lawyers and law firms. The survey though limited in its sample size did present ample evidence supporting that many clients are ready to make important shifts in their revenue allocation for various legal dealings.
Ron scrutinized the question “Between 2008 and 2013, __% of our law department’s spending will move to lower cost offshore service providers, whether directly or as a subcontractor to our in-country law firms” in detail. He calculated a weighted average by multiplying the spending shifted “by its weight”. The total of this average, 3.6% gives in the percentage of in-house counsel spending that will shift to legal outsourcing. After applying adjustment factor it was deduced that by 2013 2.9% of in-house counsel spending will shift to legal outsourcing.
To determine law department’s total spending, figures from AmmLaw 200 total revenue data were used. After adjustment, the revenue is $65bn and its 2.9% equals to $1.9bn. This deduction, thus, provides concrete facts to the ongoing discussion in the legal circles about the changes in the legal market.

Despite "recession", LPO hiring continues

2008-12-11T12:20:00.003+05:30

Mindcrest, in its attempt to keep up with burgeoning demand in legal services outsourcing has hired 4 experienced U.S. lawyers and a training specialist. This step works in line with their expansion endeavors and help Mindcrest get into new areas of work. Michelle Vega will provide expertise in general commercial litigation. Colleen McGill will expand the Regulatory and Compliance practice. Deirdre Byrne will oversee and expand the Corporate and Commercial Law practice. Mike Duffy will head Litigation Service line of business and will expand Mindcrest's litigation services on a worldwide basis. Rana Rosen will expand the company’s corporate training program.

ABA Journal Survery on impact of recession

2008-11-18T17:09:00.003+05:30

ABA Journal, with readership that runs into hundreds of thousands from the legal fraternity in the US and abroad is conducting a survey aboutthe impact of recession on the Legal profession. Here is the link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=9Dhw2g7bX_2bxfq4mW8eB1Cg_3d

Will the prevailing economic conditions help boost the growth of Legal Process Outsourcing, as several vendors are predicting?

Survey results will be published in the January ABA Journal.

IQPC Conference on LPO

2008-10-20T14:40:00.005+05:30

60% off for readers of this blog! See the following IQPC ad for registration details.

Time is running out to register for LPO at $999!

At IQPC, we feel strongly that our events provide you with tools to add to your bottom line and gain an edge over your competition. Your training budget should not be the reason why you will miss out on Legal Process Outsourcing, so we are offering a special $999 rate* to you and your colleagues.
To take advantage of this special offer register online at www.iqpc.com/us/LPO or call 1-800-882-8684. Please mention the following registration code LPO999 to ensure that you receive our $999 pricing.

* This offer can not be combined with any other IQPC offer.

Technology + Outsourcing: Best of both worlds for Discovery/Document Review Clients?

2008-09-26T16:03:00.003+05:30

This story is under development, but the following alliances do point towards verndors coming together to offer a "one-stop-shop" solution for all Document Review needs:

1. CPA Global and Applied Discovery (LexisNexis)
2. LawScribe and IQWEST
3. Integreon and Datum Legal

With some of the alliances offering a fixed price per document, interesting pricing models and consequent savings to customers are bound to emerge. If you aren't getting a discount, ask your Document Review vendor for it!

Is this an indication of the direction of evolution in the LPO space i.e. large law technology companies partnering or merging with, or even acquiring LPO services vendors? This blog is keenly watching.

Legal Process Outsourcing: Heard from the Grapevine

2008-09-26T00:14:00.003+05:30

First, excerpt from an email from a reader of the blog who has some "source" based information on Williams Lea LPO (Centric):

"I find your blog very interesting always try and dip in when I can.
I remember last year or earlier this year it was reported and mentioned on your blog too that Williams Lea bought Centric LPO to get into the LPO space. Which was great, not just a BPO pretending it was easy to move up the value chain into KPO/LPO but putting their money where there mouth is. Hurray we all cried.
However, my sources tell me that Centric LPO is being sold off from Williams Lea after only a year. The reason: - Williams Lea have realised that they have to layout proper investment in the space to gain any further credibility. The Centric LPO team had a great proposition - they just needed a vehicle and possibly still do need a vehicle that supports this growing market.
I am sure Williams Lee will blame the credit crunch and obviously the majority of their clients are in the Investment Banking space etc, but it is remiss of them and seems a shame that they get into a space through acquisition and then bail out of a market that with a bit of focus and resource could have been very successful for them.
How many other BPO firms will either pull out of the LPO space or not get into it, leaving the niche players to carve up the market between them?"

And then, the grapevine is abuzz with the news about a large legal outsourcing firm in talks to get acquired by R R Donnelley, who also acquired OfficeTiger in 2006.

With one large company set to exit the space and another one set to enter, it has become interesting for punters to predict what the LPO company of 2010 will look like. Will it be a large general business services company with pockets deep enough to acquire small companies, not the mom-and-pop shops which have opened across India, and build a cluster of capabilities and clientele under one roof? Or, will large law firms try their hand at opening offshore centers which allow them to service their corporate clients? Will niche LPO companies be able to survive given the undue scepticism about benefits of Legal Offshoring among large law firms?

The financial crisis will defintely act as a driver for optimization of legal expenses and offshoring as a means should be an obvious choice. Who to outsource to will depend on the risk profile of the buyer of the outsourced service and thought behind their vision. A lot of choice also does not help!

Press Release: ‘Customer Trust & Confidence, Paramount for Business’ – announces CPA India

2008-09-12T19:02:00.004+05:30

New Delhi, Sep 12, 2008 —CPA India - part of the CPA group, a leading provider of legal support services and world’s top intellectual property management specialist, has been awarded the AS/NZS ISO 9001:2000 quality management system (QMS) certification and ISO/IEC 27001:2005 Information Security Management (ISM) certification by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) through the Australia based SAI Global.

ISO 9000 is the international standard that provides a framework for a quality management system that ensures consistency and improvement of working practices. It is based on standards, which specify a procedure for achieving effective quality management. This certification demonstrates the company’s focus on implementing a QMS system which ensures:
§ continuous improvements in quality
§ uniform quality control guidelines leading to increased customer satisfaction
§ dedicated, systematic approach to overall quality management
§ creating and maintaining a culture of quality throughout the organization

The ISO 9001:2000 Certification confirms that CPA’s Noida operations, managed in a state-of-the-art 85,000 sq. feet facility in the National Capital Region (Noida), conform to the Quality Management Standard in the off-shored and/or outsourced services domain, in this case specifically related to legal support services inclusive of intellectual property services and analytics operations.

Similarly ISO 27001, applicable to all industry sectors, is an internationally recognized structured management process to evaluate, implement and maintain an Information Security Management System (ISMS) and comprises of best practices in information security. This certification:
§ Identifies, manages and minimizes the range of threats to which information is regularly subjected
§ Ensures improved effectiveness of Information Security and enhanced security of client data confidentiality

Compliance with this class-leading certification demonstrates CPA’s commitment to making a company more secure and safeguarding the information of its customers.

“We are proud of this achievement as it is a testimony to our commitment of continuous quality improvement, foolproof risk management and customer delight. CPA will continue to break new ground, bringing greater value to customers and thereby building enduring relationships with our customers,” said Bhaskar Bagchi, Country Head, CPA India. “It is imperative that an organization in a leadership position such as ours provides a robust and class-leading quality and security environment that enhances the trust and confidence reposed in our services by our clients”, he added.

“Both certifications acknowledge our quality processes and the stringent measures we take to ensure that every solution delivered by CPA India measure up to the highest possible international standards of quality and information security. This has helped enhancing customer satisfaction on one side and achieving continual improvement in performance on the other, thereby ensuring maximum efficiency and effectiveness,” said Inder Duggal, Head of Operation, CPA India.

“I found CPA India to be a very focused team that is organized to deliver results for the overall benefit of its clients around the world. Their processes are pertinent to the tasks in hand and designed to deliver assured results. The company management is fully committed to the cause of quality and provides the right leadership for an effective organization.” said Maj. Gen. Vinod K. Khanna, Principal QMS Auditor for SAI Global. He added “Overall CPA India gives great confidence about its ability to deliver as per the customer expectations and achieve total satisfaction amongst them as also creates value addition. The company has now got the coveted ISO 9001 certificate. This certificate should provide the requisite impetus for attaining even higher levels of organizational excellence.”

About CPA
With clients in over 100 countries, CPA is a leading provider of outsourced legal support services and the world's top intellectual property (IP) management specialist. Founded in 1969, CPA provides lifecycle management services for intellectual property such as patent, design and trademark searching, watching, renewals, and portfolio strategy. CPA is also a leader in the growing market for outsourced contract management and litigation support services, helping law firms and corporations to realize value by managing risk, cost and capacity. CPA employs over 1,100 people in 16 offices in 8 countries.

CPA started operations in India in 2005, through its acquisition of Intellevate, which formed its India operation in 2003. CPA India has over 350 employees that include lawyers, engineers and other specialized domain experts and currently operates from a state-of-the-art office in the National Capital Region spread across 85,000 sq. feet (in Noida). The Black Book of Outsourcing, in their global LPO survey earlier this year, recognized CPA as ranking number 1 in categories of Contract and Legal Document Review, Innovation, Trust, Reliability and Brand Image. www.cpaglobal.com

About SAI Global
SAI Global Limited, one of the world’s leading business publishing, compliance, training and assurance organisations, is a public company traded on the Australian Stock Exchange with revenues of over $200M annually. With offices throughout North America, Mexico, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, India, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Africa and Asia, SAI Global delivers an integrated range of standards and business improvement related products and services ranging from quality and occupational health and safety systems to information security, risk and environmental management

-Ends-

For more information, please contact:

CPA

Priyanka Sharma
Head – Corporate Communications

pkaintura@cpaglobal.com

Mobile: 098102-96660

Using Legal Offshoring to Reduce Costs in e-discovery

2008-09-06T01:44:00.004+05:30

The following comments are excerpted from a Metropolitan Counsel piece titled, "General Counsel Take Note: The E-Discovery Process Continues To Evolve". The piece interviewed Brandon Daniels, Co-Head of Legal Process Consulting, CPA Legal Services, Rob Hellewell, Senior Director, LexisNexis Applied Discovery, and Edward H. Rippey, Partner and Co-Chair of EDiscovery Practice Group, Covington & Burling LLP.

"... An[other] option that companies employ to reduce e-discovery costs is the offshore option. There are great benefits available through offshoring, but there are risks as well. This is a very competitive arena, and there are a great many start-up companies in the business that simply lack the infrastructure to protect the intellectual property of their clients. While this risk exists in the U.S. as well, it is of particular concern offshore. It is important for a company to know with whom they are dealing and to have confidence in their data security systems.

Another issue that is of some concern when dealing with an offshore service provider in this area is, of course, the quality of the staff. Even in India or the Philippines, where the standard of English is very high, the attorneys hired to handle the discovery process may lack the requisite experience to properly assess the materials they are reviewing. It is important to know something about them – their educational qualifications and how they are recruited, what the workplace environment is like and howthey are managed – and whether there are cultural differences that might influence the review process.

A third issue that is important in the offshore context is financial stability. Very often that is an important indicator of whether the enterprise has done good work for its clients in the past and will be there for them in the future. You do not want to be in the middle of a review facing a production deadline and learn that the offshore provider has run out of money and cannot meet payroll."

Rippey added, "What Brandon has said about offshoring gaining legitimacy over the past three years or so is absolutely correct. And companies are becoming increasingly savvy when it comes to conducting a review. The firstline review might be offshore, and the second handled by associates at their U.S. outside counsel. And as this development proceeds, I believe that an increasing number of companies understand that the low bid provider is not automatically going to be the best one to retain. Cost is a factor that is central to this issue, but service is now recognized as equally important, if not more so."

ABA Ethics opinion on Legal Outsourcing: Vendor Speak

2008-09-05T14:11:00.004+05:30

As previously mentioned, this blog conducted interviews of some of the major Legal Outsourcing providers, here are some of the responses:

1. How do you perceive the opinion?
Says Sanjay Kamlani, Co-CEO of Pangea3, "The recent ABA ethics opinion blesses and endorses the off-shoring of legal services. Following in the footsteps of four local bar associations, the ABA has officially issued an ethics opinion that not only approves but endorses the use of legal outsourcing providers as a method to extend in-house capacity and to reduce law-firm costs."

"...no one seriously expected the ABA to come out against legal outsourcing. After all, the ABA historically has been a finger-in-the wind organization, and today the wind blows against exorbitant legal fees and law firm inefficiencies that for too long have been a burden on the economies and even ordinary citizens of the West. It blows in the direction of globalization." "In short, the ABA panel, far from standing in the way of legal off-shoring, has embraced it, with mostly common sense caveats that are no impediment to this growing trend." says Russell Smith, Chairman of SDD Global.

Ram Vasudevan, CEO of Quislex opines "I do think this will help the industry grow."

Mark Ross, Vice President of LawScribe is a bit more cautionary about the apparent carnival among those who are pro-outsourcing: "Facially, the Opinion offers little that we have not read before in the earlier Opinions by the NYC, LA County, San Diego and Florida Bar Associations." "While it is certainly welcome, make no mistake about it, this Opinion has been viewed through ever-so-slightly rose-tinted spectacles. Yes, the tone is welcome, however substantively the ABA are simply re-affirming the position as it has been for the last few years. There is a danger that the plethora of articles, blogs commenting on the Opinion may come across to the trained eye as something of an overkill."

2. The opinion is being touted as the tipping point that the LPO space has been waiting for - your comments?

Mark continues his cautionary note: "I don't necessarily agree that this Opinion is the tipping point the industry has been waiting for. As I mentioned previously, substantively, there is nothing new. The Opinion is simply another newsworthy item relating to the LPO industry, nothing more and nothing less." "My personal belief is that the tipping point is client driven and that clients' perception and attitude to LPO will be influenced by numerous factors, including the current state of the economy, the rising costs of junior US qualified junior associates and litigation generally, the commoditization of certain elements of the legal function, and yes admittedly, increased press exposure to the concept of LPO."

Says Ram, "[The ABA opinion is] one of several factors. The quality and reputation, which take time to build, of the legal work done in India are essential to grow the industry and are the true tipping points. Those firms that have established processes for and a culture of quality, will see the tipping point sooner i.e., the tide is not going to turn for all the companies at the same time."

According to Smith "... the Opinion's favorable take on what we do, combined with the publicity this is generating, could help bring about a positive sea change in terms of awareness among in-house counsel and law firms."

Sanjay Kamlani sees the work not only increasing in volume but also complexity "The nature of the legal services [Pangea3's existing Fortune 500 and Am Law 200] clients are outsourcing to us continues to mature in terms of scope and sophistication. For example, in-house counsel departments have outsourced real time transaction sensitive M&A due diligence work over the past year; quite a step forward from legacy contract review and abstraction. And in electronic discovery, our senior litigation attorneys have increasingly played the role of document review strategists, guiding counsel on everything from responsive codes, to search methodology and case specific strategy related platform functionality and suitability. "
"To the extent that there were any Doubting Thomases in those organizations, the recent ABA opinion certainly vindicates the GCs and partners who chose to outsource legal work to India despite those skeptics. This ABA opinion gives them the additional support they may have needed to exponentially expand the strategy and the effort. For organizations that succumbed to the doubts of conservatives who warned against legal outsourcing because of legal ethics concerns, the ABA opinion should certainly serve as a catalyst for the GCs and partners in those companies and law firms to begin their effort to catch up with their counter parts who have been outsourcing legal work now for years. So for both these reasons, the ABA opinion could very well trigger a tipping point for the LPO industry."

3. Have you received more than usual number of queries from prospects since the opinion? Any highlights?
"We have seen a significant increase in inquiries in the last several months precipitated by the US recession both from the standpoint of the cost pressures and related head count reductions associated with the recession as well as from the standpoint of increased legal work directly related to the subprime debacle that triggered the recession. The ABA opinion is likely to accelerate the momentum by eliminating any legal ethics related barrier that may have been holding up some decision makers who are faced with one or both of these problems." says Kamlani.

According to Smith, the spike in inquiries came not from anything new in the Opinion itself, but rather from the favorable publicity it is generating. Quislex received several congratulatory messages and notes that the opinion is good for the industry as a whole. And Mark, rightfully, points that we need to allow a little more time before being in a position to effectively assess any impact the Opinion may or many not have.

4. Is your company prepared to take on the wave of work expected from clients of offshored legal services in the next 6-12 months? Can you cite examples of such preparation?

"We will be working closely with leading Indian Universities and technical colleges to ensure that as a market leader we always have access to the best possible talent. We will also be opening up a second India facility either later this year or early 2009." says Mark.

Says Ram Vasudevan of Quislex, "Our preparation for work is based on executed contractual commitments, existing work, repeat work from existing clients and a strong pipeline of new work."

Similar to Mark's comments on training to enable Indian lawyers to support legal outscouring work, Russell Smith says, "For one thing, for over a year we've put a big emphasis on advanced legal training, especially in the areas of U.S. legal research and drafting, so most of our people are already functioning at the level of a U.S. law firm associate or higher." He continues, "... taking advantage of the fact that we get hundreds of job applications a day, we have been very carefully preparing a large database of qualified candidates who can join our ranks on short notice. Lastly, we have floor space and infrastructure all set for an additional 200 or more employees, so we're ready to ramp up, if and when the time comes."

As with Mark and Russell, Sanjay shares his plans of getting the infrastructure ready, "We have more than doubled our work force since the same period last year and we increased our seat capacity to over 400. From a talent capacity standpoint, we have evolved several strategies to handle bursty growth spurts and demand for service. So, in all respects, including physical infrastructure, technology, and talent, we are well poised to handle anywhere from twice to three times our current volume at any given point in time."

5. How do you see the demand for offshored legal services evolving over the next 2-3 years?
Sanjay is quite upbeat about the evolution of the industry from this point, "With this likely tipping point, we should see the demand for legal services growing exponentially over the next twelve months. Over the next 2 to 3 years, we would expect every large in-house counsel department and a much larger number of law firms to view offshore outsourcing strategies as essential to their legal practice. In many respects, outsourced legal services from India’s LPO industry represents the best legal work for the best price--the best value for money. To go back to the example of an M&A transaction with a budget on the due diligence, an attorney operating within a US or European cost structure, be it a law firm or an in-house counsel, realizes how much more of a thorough due diligence review they can accomplish with highly qualified attorneys and at an India based LPO with a substantially lower cost structure. As a result, attorney’s in the US and Europe are coming to realize that the LPO value proposition enables the greatest fulfillment of their professional responsibility to their clients. To state it the other way, without legal outsourcing, these attorneys realize that the level of service they can otherwise provide to their clients is less."

Russell Smith of SDD offers some predictions,
"1. Corporations, not Western law firms, will drive the market. Law firms currently provide 45% of the business for the industry, and more and more of them will hire offshore providers, but this will be driven mainly by the dictates of corporate clients. Another way that corporations will drive the market, indirectly, is by obtaining flat (or fixed) rate billing from their outside counsel, instead of hourly billing. This kind of billing can radically alter the dynamics of Western law practice, as law firms working for flat rates will have a compelling incentive to reduce hours and costs, instead of increasing them as before. Flat rate billing will cause many law firms to realize that offshore providers can be important allies in improving their bottom line, rather than competitive enemies.
2. Every sector of the legal offshoring industry will grow dramatically, including so-called "lower end" services, such as document coding, form filling, transcript digesting, and legal transcription. Ultimately, however, the biggest impact, the long-term mother lode, will be higher-value services such as legal research and drafting – services that constitute the bulk of the legal work now done in the West.
3. The continued boom in the industry will lead to continued and increased competition among offshoring providers for legal talent in India. At the same time, as the public profile of the industry grows and improves, an increasing number of law graduates and young lawyers will gravitate to the industry, and more of the best and brightest among 12th-graders will decide on law as a career. However, during the lag between the current pool of talent and the increase in that pool in the future, the competition for the best law graduates and lawyers will be won mostly by high-end providers. This is because higher-value work tends to be more interesting and challenging, and because the higher profit margins allow for higher salaries.
4. Training will be central to the industry’s success. Training will be especially critical as providers move up the value chain in relation to their services, and as they recruit more deeply into the pool of available talent, most of whom will be fresh law graduates with no experience in working for Western clients. "

Ram predicts "More acceptance in the US legal market and perhaps consolidation on the Indian front. We will also likely see several players exiting, voluntarily or involuntarily from the space due to execution issues."

Mark comments on the evolution including countries like UK to follow the US adoption of legal offshpring. Interestingly, he also predicts a dip in partner profitability (growth in percentage terms):
"... forward thinking law firms, wishing to stay ahead of the curve during difficult economic times, will start exploring with a much greater intensity, partnerships with the leading LPOs in the marketplace. 2008 and 2009, by all accounts will witness profits per equity partner dipping for the first time in my living memory. Perhaps this will be the wake up call, that pushes LPO into the mainstream for law firms, as a viable strategic offering to their clients.
I also believe the UK will follow the US lead and explore the specific areas of the UK legal profession that are most suitable to the LPO model. At present we are yet to witness large scale outsourcing of pre-issue of court proceedings, personal injury work for example. Pre-issue cases account for well over 95% of the entire UK personal injury work flow, and this is an area ripe for outsourcing. "

Legal Outsourcing as an industry seems to have arrived at a juncture where the serious players have evolved in their thinking, strategy and execution. The ground is set for some serious growth. Watch this space for further interviews with other large providers.

Hennessey, yet again!

2008-09-05T13:20:00.002+05:30

Below is a public statement being posted in various places by Joseph Hennessey. He's the lead lawyer in the lawsuit against legal outsourcing in Washington D.C. federal court, Newman McIntosh & Hennessey vs. Bush, which was withdrawn only a few days after the filing of a motion to dismiss. Hennessey now says he's busy hunting for "those who have been victimized by the use of foreign legal process outsourcers," so he can file "an action for damages on a class wide basis." But judging from the first "example" he's found, where Indian doctors allegedly were used to assist in a surgery that "went horribly wrong," it looks like he still has more plaintiff-searching to do. If anybody can see a connection between this allegedly botched surgery and legal outsourcing, please let me know.

Meanwhile, it is reported that Hennessey also is threatening (by email to file an ethics complaint, due to the fact that four Indian legal professionals are credited by name in the motion to dismiss Hennessey's first lawsuit. The motion was signed and filed not by Indian lawyers, but by an attorney admitted to the bar of the D.C. federal court. Yet Hennessey claims that the legal research and drafting done by the Indian team amounts to "the unauthorized practice of law." This is an odd position to take, given that summer associates, paralegals, new-hires, and others not admitted to the bar perform legal research and drafting at every major law firm in the U.S., and often are credited at the end of legal papers in an "on the brief" section. Also, the work done in India in this case was carefully supervised by U.S.-admitted attorneys at every stage, both on-site in Mysore and in Washington D.C., where the final product was carefully reviewed and signed by duly admitted counsel of record in the case.

Here is Hennessey's statement about the new lawsuit he says he's preparing:
"Joseph Hennessey has joined John J. Beins and Seth D. Goldberg who have significant expertise in litigating consumer class action lawsuits -- as well as other business litigation. John Beins, Seth Goldman, Anthony Newman, Ernie McIntosh and I will be combining our various areas of expertise to identify those who have been victimized by the use of foreign legal process outsourcers. Collectively, we decided that rather than litigate an academic declaratory judgment action, we would bring an action for damages on a class wide basis. We have, for example, already heard a person who believes their HIPAA rights were violated when Indian doctors were video-conferenced to consult and make recommendations about a surgical procedure -- a procedure that went horribly wrong. Not only did this person not consent to consultation, but all of this persons private medical records were transferred to these Indian-based doctors -- a transfer that violated her HIPAA rights. So, stay tuned -- we are not at the end of this issue, we are at the beginning."

Going of Mohammed to the Mountain: ABA's Guidelines on using Legal Process Outsourcing

2008-08-29T02:41:00.002+05:30

"A lawyer may outsource legal or nonlegal support services provided the lawyer remains ultimately responsible for rendering competent legal services to the client...", so begins the ethics opinion by the AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION STANDING COMMITTEE ON ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY. In a report titled, "Lawyer’s Obligations When Outsourcing Legal and Nonlegal Support Services", the committe outlines, in a soft tone, the guidelines on how to use the now maturing industry of Legal Process Outsourcing. Some highlights, most of those have been previously discussed on this blog, are:

- Do your diligence on the vendor

1. Meet the offshore lawyers who will be working for you

2. Don't just be impressed by claims of client confidentiality, security and "everything world-class" but actually exert to verify the claims

- Educate and convince yourself on the judicial enforcement procedures of the jurisdiction of the vendor's location. If you can't enforce the confidentialy, conflict-check contracts or service-level agreements, they practically don't mean much. It may be an idea to sign such contracts and agreements with a US based entity representing the vendor. In other words, wholly India based vendors may be a strict no-no.

- Supervise, supervise, supervise the offshored entity. If it bears your signature, its yours - doesn't matter if you got it drafted in Jinxmagistan

- Inform your client, rather obtain their formal consent, if you are going to be using offshoring for their work

- If you are passing on the costs of using an offshore vendor to the client as disbursement, no markup costs are allowed - but you are still required to supervise

This blog will conduct interviews with several vendors to get their opinion and the evolution in the landscape of US legal services. Watch this space!

Press Release: Acumen Legal Files Motion to Dismiss in Newman McIntosh & Hennessey vs. Bush

2008-08-19T00:51:00.005+05:30

INDIAN LEGAL SERVICES COMPANY FIGHTS BACK AGAINST ANTI-OUTSOURCING LAWSUIT IN WASHINGTON D.C. FEDERAL COURT

Acumen Legal Files Motion to Dismiss in Newman McIntosh & Hennessey vs. Bush

Washington, d.c. , August 18, 2008 — In a closely-watched legal case, apparently designed by a U.S. law firm to place roadblocks in the way of the fast-growing legal services outsourcing industry in India, the Indian lawyers are fighting back. Newman McIntosh & Hennessy (“NMH”), a U.S. law firm worried about off-shoring of legal work, sued India-based Acumen Legal Services, along with U.S. President George Bush, in the Washington D.C. federal court. In response, Acumen today filed a hard-hitting motion to dismiss.

NMH is suing on the basis of speculation, unsupported by even a single example, that the U.S. government is intercepting all or most of the data sent by U.S. lawyers to foreign legal outsourcing providers, as part of an anti-terrorism campaign. Seizing on that speculation as an excuse, NMH seeks a court order against “all United States-based attorneys” who outsource legal work to India, and “all foreign legal outsourcing providers.”

Thanks to a motion to dismiss and supporting legal brief researched and drafted entirely in India, the NMH law firm is getting an unexpected taste of the kind of high-quality legal work that Indian lawyers can provide, even in the Washington D.C. federal court. In their brief on the motion to dismiss, the legal team for Acumen points out the following:

NMH’s requested declaratory and injunctive relief, in addition to having no legal or factual justification, would reach far beyond NMH’s obviously intended target, namely, low-cost foreign legal outsourcing companies, which NMH apparently perceives as competition. The requested relief could have a substantial adverse effect on the operations of all U.S. law firms that have foreign offices, and all U.S. corporations that need to use foreign counsel to transact business abroad. NMH’s requested ruling that any foreign electronic transmission of data between clients and attorneys, or between attorneys, constitutes a waiver of constitutional rights and discovery privileges, would amount to an untenable and unwarranted interference with global commerce.

Moreover, NMH’s request for an order requiring all attorneys in the United States, including in-house counsel, (a) to search for every instance in which they ever transmitted any kind of data to any foreign national, and (b) to send a notification regarding the same in every case, presumably to the owner of the data, would amount to one of the most onerous and unjustified burdens ever imposed by any court in a civil proceeding.

In addition, by requesting the Court to issue declarations answering seven hypothetical legal questions, purportedly because the NMH law firm “need[s] guidance,” wants “to gain certainty,” and “must understand” various points of law to help the firm “in an increasingly globalized legal services environment,” NMH seeks relief that is impermissible under well-established principles governing declaratory judgments. The NMH lawyers, in essence, are seeking to outsource their legal research tasks to this Court, and secondarily to Acumen, President Bush and their respective counsel.

NMH’s Complaint is extraordinary, not only for what it contains, but even more so for what it does not. Nowhere in the Complaint does NMH allege:
§ any example of an actual or impending injury to itself or to anyone;
§ any actual or impending violation of Fourth Amendment rights;
§ any instance of an actual or impending waiver of Fourth Amendment rights;
§ any basis for finding a waiver of Fourth Amendment rights, given that NMH does not allege that any Fourth Amendment rights are being violated by the supposed government interception of data;
§ any instance of an actual or impending breach or waiver of attorney-client privilege or confidentiality;
§ any actual or impending example of government interception of data;
§ any actual or impending instance of transmission of data to any foreign nationals by anyone;
§ any basis for NMH’s speculation that electronic transmissions to foreign nationals are more likely to fall into the hands of the government than are domestic transmissions, which are subject to possible domestic surveillance by law enforcement agencies;
§ any examples of actual or impending conduct within the District of Columbia by any of the parties;
§ any relationship or interaction of any kind among any identified persons or entities in the District of Columbia or anywhere else, except for the unsuccessful solicitation sent by Acumen in India to NMH in Maryland;
§ any monetary dispute or requested monetary relief that could support the “amount in controversy” requirement for NMH’s assertion of diversity jurisdiction;
§ any legal or factual basis upon which this court could grant the sweeping declaratory and injunctive relief sought against millions of non-parties, such as every lawyer in the United States, and every foreign legal outsourcing company;
§ any reason why NMH cannot avoid the speculative dangers it alleges by simply (a) continuing to refrain from using foreign legal outsourcing providers, and (b) seeking a protective order in any litigation where NMH believes that its clients’ data may be sent by adversaries to such providers;
§ any legal or factual basis upon which the court could require the Executive Branch to “prevent the waiver of Fourth Amendment rights” or “safeguard the attorney-client privilege and client communications and client confidences and secrets;” or
§ any reason why protection is needed beyond the statutory protection already provided by Congress, under which “[n]o otherwise privileged wire, oral, or electronic communication intercepted in accordance with, or in violation of, the [applicable government surveillance provisions] shall lose its privileged character.” See e.g. 18 U.S.C. § 2517(4); 50 U.S.C. § 1806(a).

In short, as further discussed in the remainder of this brief, NMH has not come close to meeting the most basic requirements for standing or personal jurisdiction.

A full copy of Acumen’s motion is available by clicking here.

Associate Speaketh

2008-08-05T11:53:00.003+05:30

The following is an excerpt from a recent email I got. The author of the email is an associate with one of the largest full-service law firms in the US. It is definitely interesting to note acceptance of LPO from the bright graduates entering top firms.

LPO is extremely fascinating and I am shocked at how few lawyers are aware of the trend in its direction. More shocking, was the hostile reaction I received from lawyers I attempted to discuss the matter with. Many feel the legal profession is free from the economic pressures of globalization. It has been particularly interesting from my perspective as a summer associate because the work that will be outsourced is work currently slated for my first and second year training. Thank you for all of the information you have provided on the website.

Press Release: Halleland Lewis Takes New Recruitment Approach

2008-07-28T20:33:00.002+05:30

Minneapolis mid-size firm speaks directly to recruits about firm culture, professional development and salaries through humorous, online micro-site.
MINNEAPOLIS, MN (July 21, 2008) - Selling yourself may be a requirement of job interviewing, but in the view of one law firm, young attorney applicants are regularly selling themselves short.

Recent research from the American Bar Association suggests that 40 percent of lawyers are dissatisfied with their job within six to nine years after the completion of their law degree - an indication, says Halleland Lewis Nilan & Johnson, that the recruitment and retention methods historically used by law firms are outmoded and inadequate for today's recruits.
To encourage candidates to "ask hard questions and get real answers," the firm today launches the Lawyer Job Interview Translator, an online recruitment micro-site available at www.thelawyertranslator.com that jabs at the jargon often used in the law firm hiring process and instead gives job prospects an authentic but memorable look at Halleland Lewis's unique offerings and culture. The old approach to recruiting and retaining lawyers is doomed, says Halleland Lewis, and needs to be replaced by an approach that attracts top people to an environment where they'll stay, develop as top-tier professionals and give clients a return on their investment.

For example, Halleland Lewis believes that recent super-sized jumps in salary offers to new lawyers will result in greater pass-along expenses to clients and pressure on newer attorneys to charge for inefficient services, with no corollary benefit to clients. The starting salary jumps, says Halleland, are the direct result of law firms' tendency to recruit by simply matching each others' offers, rather than trying to distinguish themselves to candidates. The tradition is so ingrained that many firms actually stifle their personalities and sidestep hard questions from applicants concerning long-term compensation, performance expectations and prospects for success. As a result, new talent often join a law firm culture they don't like, and end up leaving after a few years. The result is disruption of client work and excessive costs to recruit and train replacements, most of which clients bear.

Site's Viewers Decode Typical Law Firm Interview Jargon
Part of an overall recruitment campaign for the firm, the Lawyer Job Interview Translator features an online "talking head" law firm interviewer who provides pat answers to questions on topics ranging from work environment to professional development to salaries. Using this tool, Halleland Lewis distinguishes its own competitive compensation program, for example, from other firms' salary-matching practices by emphasizing its own opportunities for significant performance-based bonuses.

After the virtual interviewer has given his jargonistic response, viewers of the site can click a "Translate" button to decode the jargon, then learn about the "Halleland Way" of responding to these same questions directly. The campaign also features written materials meant to give an accurate snapshot of the firm's distinguishing features: a culture-rich, "clients first" personality, a bonus-driven approach to encouraging hard work, and a heavy investment in professional development.

The Translator reaches out to a new lawyer population in shorter supply due to greater demand, a national downturn of law school enrollees, and an uptick of associates exiting the profession after just a few years on the job. The potency of these trends have seemingly counteracted threats of economic uncertainty and rising unemployment for the industry. Lawyers' starting salaries skyrocketed again in 2008 - up $10,000 per offer among large firms, according to the National Association of Law Placement.

"We're looking for new lawyers who want to be treated like adults and are willing to accept the responsibility that comes with that. We want people who ask hard questions and press for meaningful answers, because we think those are the kind of people our clients expect to have handling their problems. Our challenge is to attract those new attorneys with top-shelf analytical abilities and client service skills who want to work somewhere that's taking a new approach. Building that attraction starts even before the interview process, by providing meaningful information that allows people to distinguish between firms and decide where they want to interview based on what's important to them," said Matthew Damon, Vice President and founding shareholder with Halleland Lewis Nilan & Johnson. "We hope the Translator will help job seekers see past the standard lingo and think about the nature of their professional contributions, their development as attorneys, and the kind of place they want to work."
Associate Input Used to Design CampaignIn designing the Lawyer Job Interview Translator, Halleland Lewis and its advertising firm partner, St. Paul-based Foote & Co., enlisted the help of an important constituency: its associates. In fact, not only were all of the firm's associates surveyed about hot-button job satisfaction areas, they were enlisted to participate in the initial creative session to capture their ideas.

"The associates were invaluable to the campaign," said Stephen Warch, shareholder and Halleland Lewis' Recruiting Chair. "Too many recruiting efforts are concerned only with what it takes to get talented attorneys in the door. We have always taken a broader approach, as we want to recruit people who will succeed here long-term, not just those that have impressive credentials. That requires an approach that allows them to screen us as much as vice versa. We want to convey to recruits a straightforward message about our firm's culture and values, so they can determine early on whether practicing here will be fulfilling and sustainable."

About Halleland Lewis Nilan & Johnson
Founded in 1996, Halleland Lewis Nilan & Johnson has built its reputation by putting clients first and building a practice centered on values - thus defining the next generation of law firm. Based in downtown Minneapolis, the litigation-strong firm focuses on six areas of practice: commercial litigation, labor and employment, product liability/mass tort litigation, health care, business law and intellectual property litigation.
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Student Research examining the Legal Process Outsourcing

2008-07-28T18:46:00.004+05:30

What began as an email (excerpted below) resulted in a very well written research report on LPO. Without further ado, presenting Maya Karwande (Thanks for the tip-off, Mark!)

Hello! My name is Maya Karwande, I am a third- year student at Tufts University in Boston, MA. I am doing a research paper for a class about legal process outsourcing. The paper will focus on the legal and ethical regulations/ implications of LPO, but will also examine the driving business factors behind the growth of the industry.

Legal Process Outsourcing:
Can Offshoring of Legal Services to India be both Efficient and Ethical? By Maya Karwande

In early 2005 a company called Lexadigm was hired by an American law firm to draft a brief for a U.S. Supreme Court case. The case was complex and resource intensive and centered on applying the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause to a tax dispute. The brief will ultimately be filed by the American law firm, which will be able to review and use part, some, or none of Lexadigm’s work in the final product. The outcome is the same as if one of the firm’s associates had drafted the brief; except in this case the lawyers were operating out of India.

Lexadigm’s work on a Supreme Court case is an example of the latest development in offshoring: legal process outsourcing. “Legal Process Outsourcing” is not a phrase commonly heard in public discourse. The concept of outsourcing aspects of legal process, ranging from simple tasks like legal coding to more complex projects such as legal research, is provocative. Initially the idea is often met with the question: “Is that even legal?” This almost intuitive reaction is reflective of the overwhelming public unawareness of the role non-lawyers play in our legal system. In the last ten to fifteen years this role has been increasing. Law firms and large corporations have been contracting or in other terms, “outsourcing domestically” different aspects of the legal process to legal consulting firms and other specialized vendors. In 2005 the phase “legal process outsourcing” (LPO) was coined to refer to the specific phenomenon of offshore contracting of services related to the legal process to foreign lawyers, predominantly in India. Since 2005 this budding industry has grown, with over 100 LPO companies working for large law-firms, in-house legal departments, and corporations. According to a 2007 report by Valuenotes, a research company specializing in offshoring, the industry generated revenue of $146 million in 2006. Driven by the increasing cost of legal services and demands for efficiency and cost savings, LPO conceptualizes the legal services industry using business terms.

The benefits of legal process outsourcing come hand in hand with complex ethical issues that demand discussion. However, to this point there has been relatively little comprehensive analysis of the ethical issues inherent in the utilization of foreign lawyers for domestic legal work. My goal in this paper is to identify the ethical dilemmas of LPO, the current situation regarding guidelines and regulation, and discuss solutions to ensure LPO is not only efficient, but ethical as well.

Part I will provide a brief history and background of LPO, including a summary of the types of processes being outsourced, structural models of the industry, and potential benefits and drawbacks. Part II will outline the challenges of LPO in regard to quality assurance, supervision and the specific legal ethical considerations of conflict of interest, confidentiality, disclosure and client consent, and billing. Part III will discuss current mechanisms in place to address the concerns surrounding LPO. This part will be divided into two sections, the first addressing initiatives of self-regulation within the LPO industry and the second addressing regulations from the American legal community. Part IV will identify the weaknesses and potential of the mechanisms in place and propose a comprehensive and integrative solution that brings together formal guidelines from the American Bar Association with standards for self-regulated accreditation within the LPO industry. Part V concludes with a brief discussion of the potential normative implications offshoring may have for the legal industry.

I. HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND

From BPO to KPO to LPO
Outsourcing is not a new phenomenon. Driven by a global market and the temptation of cheaper labor, the industry took off in the late 1980’s with the rise of outsourcing manufacturing jobs abroad. Momentum built, and off-shoring practices expanded to include the industrial sector. Eventually, with the rapid increase in telecommunication, Internet and information technology, the road was paved for the “second wave” of outsourcing of “white-collar jobs.” Typically termed Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) this second wave refers to the contracting of specific business tasks to a third-party service. The tasks usually serve a supporting role and are not crucial for the company to maintain its position in the market place. In this context there is often a demarcation between “back-office” outsourcing, which generally refers to internal functions such as billing or purchasing, and “front-office” which refers to more customer related services such as marketing and technology support. The “front office” category of BPO is often associated with call and other communication centers. BPO is most commonly done from U.S. and U.K. markets to countries such as India, South Africa, and the Philippines.

Within Business Process Outsourcing is the specialized subset of Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO). KPO broadly refers to “legal and financially complex business process outsourcing.” The idea of “process” in relation to KPO cannot be defined in terms of normal associations of a process being standardized, commoditized, or easy to replicate. Instead, KPO refers to a value-added form of outsourcing that involves low-level decisions that require a certain level of expertise, including language skills, higher education, and often specific credentials. Sometimes referred to as “judgment based BPO,” KPO includes processes within information technology, businesses intelligence, clinical research, and the rapidly growing sector of legal services.

Legal Process Outsourcing refers to the offshoring of different elements in the legal process by law-firms, corporations, and “in-house legal departments” (mainly in the U.S. and U.K.) to offshore centers (mainly in India). A recent report issued in December 2005 and updated in July 2007 by the research company ValueNotes, estimated revenue from LPO at $146 million in 2006 and projects they will grow to $640 million by 2010. According to ValueNotes, LPO firms in India employed around 7,500 people; a figure they predict will increase to 32,000 by the end of 2010.

On the more conservative side, a report released in January 2006 by Evalueserve, a research and outsourcing company, estimated lower statistics and projected more moderate growth. Evalueserve estimates the current number of employees providing legal services to the U.S. from India at only 1,300, and projects it will grow by 5,200 in December 2010, and 16,000 by December 2015. Evaluserve estimates revenue of approximately $56 million from 2005, and projects it will increase to $300 million 2010, and $960 million from 2015. Evalueserve correlates this growth with the expected growth of the legal services industry in the United States. When grounded with the increases in the U.S. market, Evalueserve concludes that by 2015 only 1.2% of jobs will be off-shored and constitute only .2% of the total revenue of the U.S. legal services industry.

The range of statistics indicates the difficulty in measuring the emerging industry accurately and leaves the truth most likely located somewhere in the middle. Despite the disparity in numbers, the overarching trend of projected growth demonstrates legal process outsourcing has become a legitimate sector and will continue to grow in the future.

What is being outsourced?

“Short of anything where you have to physically be there or sign on the dotted line, we can do it”
- Sanjay Kamlani, Co- chief executive officer of Pangea3

A key question in discussing the ethics of LPO is: “What is being outsourced?” The answer ranges from simple legal coding to highly technical patent applications. The wide range of activities has implications for LPO in terms of the level of training required, efficiency and value of the processes, liability and security concerns, and may raise issues regarding specific legal restrictions.

Legally, anyone who is not a registered lawyer in the U.S. cannot give legal advice nor do anything that would constitute “practicing law.” This has typically restricted LPO firms from supplying “core” functions such as legal opinions, judgments, or crucial communications with clients. LPO firms, however, do perform a variety a non-core, manpower intensive functions such as legal transcription, document conversion, legal data entry, legal coding and indexing.

Within “non-core” functions, there still exists a great range of processes LPO firms may offer. As a starting point, these basic LPO services can be categorized as “low-value” work. Evalueserve categorizes this work as “Electronic Document Management” and estimates a majority of Indian researchers are engaged in this type of LPO. Increasingly there has been a demand for legal research, contract drafting, and work related to intellectual property rights, which is categorized as “high-value.” The “high-value” category is distinct from “low-value” aspects of LPO and BPO because the services require substantial domain knowledge, a deep understanding of the law, and have a certain qualitative nature. These categories can be divided into six types of services:

Research Services: Services include statutory and case law research, much of which can now be done via electronic databases.

Due Diligence Services: Due-diligence refers to the large amount of data lawyers must examine to verify legal and financial status of companies for mergers or acquisitions. This work involves sifting though data, confirming supplier agreements and checking company books, board resolutions and other documents to ensure there are no “surprises.”

Contract Drafting and Proof Reading of Contracts: Drafting includes employee contracts, non-disclosure agreements, licensing agreements, supplier agreements, lease agreements, vendor agreements, and distributor agreements. Many of these agreements follow a standard template, enabling foreign lawyers to produce a draft that can later be reviewed and modified by a U.S. attorney. Foreign lawyers can also proofread and double check documents to make sure they comply with the guidelines of the client.

Document Discovery in Litigation: Foreign lawyers can assist in “document discovery,” a process in which lawyers must review large amounts of data in preparation for a case, often under pressure to meet a deadline. In this period, outsourcing can help firms negotiate the problem of having to either work overtime or hire temporary staff.

Intellectual Property Services: This category represents one of the riskiest and fastest growing sectors in LPO. A patent application usually includes the following: prior art searching, drafting background, drafting specifications, drafting claims, drafting summary, preparing drawings, final review and modifications for filing. Only the final review must legally be performed by an attorney registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Depending on clients’ preference, LPO firms can have varying degrees of responsibility for preparing drafts of patent applications. The patent industry is in such high demand because it requires time-consuming repetitive research. Many law firms cannot process the growing number of applications at prices their clients are willing to pay and are forced to change their strategy.

In addition, an LPO company is able to employ not only lawyers, but also engineers to work on drafts. Increased specialization and a broader range of expertise offers yet another advantage with LPO.

Creative Innovations
In addition to the typical tasks associated with the legal service industry, several LPO companies are carving out their own niche in the market. By combining superb information technology (IT) with legal process outsourcing, companies like Pangea3 are creating a new products they call “legal solutions” or “Contract management and analytics applications.” For example, Pangea3 had a client whose general counsel was being flooded by calls regarding difficult legal questions related to the company’s different software and procurement contracts. As a solution, Pangea3 reviewed the contracts and produced a database containing a set of answers to recurrent questions.

Models of Outsourcing: The Indian Appeal

There is a smattering of countries around the globe involved in LPO, however, the industry’s offshoring destination originated and remains concentrated in India. This holds true for a number of reasons. India maintains a large and highly skilled work force with strong English language capabilities. In addition, Indian lawyers have the built in advantage of a similar legal system based on British common law and many have additional training in U.S. law. LPO also holds appeal for professionals in India. Approximately 80,000 Indian lawyers graduate each year. For many of these lawyers, legal process outsourcing is a promising, profitable, and challenging alternative to the Indian legal market. Similar to the American system, the Indian legal market is dominated by competitive law firms where advancement can be a tedious process over a period of years.

Although LPO remains concentrated in India, the structure and onshore/offshore relationship between client, legal firms, and LPO firms varies. There are four main models LPO firms typically develop and operate under. Each model, as outlined by Evalueserve, has specific implications and ethical concerns that must be considered in regard to the level of supervision between the U.S. attorney and foreign lawyer.

Captive Centers: This model is formed when a large corporation starts its own center in foreign country responsible for its legal and business processing issues. In early 2005 General Electric became one of the first companies to set up a captive center. They did so by to employing Indian lawyers at its center in Guragon, India. Now there are almost 30 lawyers at the center responsible for supporting the majority of legal work of the company. In this model, the ethical responsibility falls mainly on the company that is hiring the foreign lawyers, and the American lawyers responsible for supervising their work. Some issues may arise in regard to disclosure, as many companies may not want to reveal they are offshoring.

Captive Centers formed by U.S./ U.K. firms and their subsidiaries: Indian laws currently do not allow foreign law firms to practice in India. As a result, some law firms in the U.S./ U.K are working with firms to India to set up subsidiaries to provide legal and paralegal services for export purposes only. For example, Fox & Mandal and ALMT Legal, two Indian based law firms, are teaming up with Patent Metrix, an Irvine-California based law firm. Ethical responsibility in this model is similar to the Captive Center in that the U.S./ U.K. law firm is substituted in replace of the company.

Joint Ventures by U.S./ U.K. based firms: In this model a U.S./ U.K. law firm will enter into a venture with a LPO firm in India. An example of this new model is the announcement by Clifford Chance in 2006 that it would be setting up the world’s largest offshoring initiative by a global law firm in conjunction with Integreon Managed Solutions. Again, the ethical responsibility falls on the U.S./ U.K law firm to supervise and maintain the security of all information shared. In addition, there are issues of disclosure and passing on cost saving to clients.

Third Party Vendors Providing Services to Law-Firms and In-house Corporate Attorneys: This is the model that typically comes to mind when legal process outsourcing is discussed. In this model, a law firm or in-house legal department for a company will hire a third party provider (i.e. a LPO company) with trained lawyers and non-lawyers to complete a task. Examples of the top LPO companies of 2008, according to the Black Book of Outsourcing, include LawScribe. Clutch Group, CPA Global, Integreon, and Mindcrest. This model raises ethical responsibility issues for the law firm that is using the LPO company, but also for the LPO companies itself. Complicated and new ethical issues surround the LPO firms in regard to conflict of interest and the ethical/legal responsibility of U.S./ U.K, lawyers working for the LPO firm.

Benefits and Drawbacks
“Why have a $300-per-hour lawyer do due-diligence when it can be done [more cheaply] by someone else?”
- Ajay Raju, Reed Smith L.L.P

In 1995 Bickel & Brewer became the first American law firm to open an office in Hyderabad, India. Co-founder and managing partner, Bill Brewer, recalls going out to lunch with an Indian relative:

“We were looking for new ways to be more efficient in handling the millions of pieces of information that confront us in each case. I’m not sure how it came out the conversation, but somewhere a light went off. I asked, ‘You can have a lawyer for how much an hour in India?’ He said, ‘Two dollars an hour.’ We didn’t make it to dinner before we were setting up the subsidiary in India.”

Currently, Indian lawyers will generally charge $40-$60 an hour for work their American counterparts would normally bill at $120-$300. This produces an average savings of 30-70%, according to the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM). The savings increases with the complexity of the job, leading to huge cost savings in patent research, intellectual property and other information technology sectors. A thankful CEO wrote to the LPO Company SDD Global, “Your group saved us 90% and completed the work in less than half the time. For clarification, the research you did in less than one month saved us over $200,000.” Efficiency is also increased by the “time-zone” advantage, which allows Indian lawyers to begin working as their U.S. employers are going to bed. In the morning, U.S. employers can review documents produced while they were sleeping. This reduces the response time and has huge advantages for tasks operating under a strict deadline, like legal research and document discovery. Offshoring also presents a cost-efficient alternative to the “fast or famine” situation many law firms face. In this situation law firms are faced with the dilemma of having either too much work or not enough. With LPO, firms are able to hire additional support when needed instead of either keeping unnecessary staff on their payroll or working overtime. This practice has been common domestically with the hiring of temporary lawyers or paralegals for large projects that need to be completed in a short time, but offshoring introduces increased savings.

In addition to pure efficiency there are other benefits to offshoring. Lawyers are able devote more time to larger and more complex cases since they are not bogged down in tedious paper work. “It gives me more time to do other things,” says Rishi Varma, general counsel for Trico Marine Services, a company that has used the LPO Company Pangea3. Offshoring can also lead to higher quality in the final product, as Indian lawyers are able to spend more time drafting a document, which is ultimately reviewed by an experienced U.S. attorney. This also allows for U.S. lawyers and paralegals to move up the value chain, spend more time face- to -face time with clients, and provide a broader range of services.

Despite the benefits, there are some complicating factors that arise with LPO. Training differences between Indian and American law schools and styles of English can be present complications and at times an awkward learning curve. There are the also increased difficulties in managing and supervising foreign attorneys that may detract from the overall time saved. Furthermore, outsourcing is a highly sensitive and risky political issue that many law firms and corporations are concerned may led to negative publicity. Of the many Fortune 500 companies such as Bayer, General Electric, Oracle, Cisco and Microsoft who do utilize offshoring, few are willing to speak candidly about the fact.. Finally, the overwhelming reasons cited for resistance to offshoring are ethical considerations and liability concerns.

II. ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND CHALLENGES

“I do have concern about confidence, confidentiality, privacy, conflict of interest, ethical values, and those are issues that are a real concern.”
- Jerome Shestack, former President of the American Bar Association.

The overarching ethical issue of legal process outsourcing is the problem of the unauthorized practice of law (UPL). American Bar Association Model Rule of Professional Conduct 5.5 (a) states: “A lawyer shall not practice law in a jurisdiction in violation of the regulation of the legal profession in that jurisdiction or assist another in doing so.”. Section 5.5 (b) further elaborates that a lawyer that is not admitted to practice in this jurisdiction shall not:

(1) Establish an office or other systematic and continuous presence in this jurisdiction for the practice of law.
(2) Hold out to the public or otherwise represent that the lawyer is admitted to practice law in this jurisdiction.

The reasoning behind UPL is that “limiting the practice of law to members of the bar protects the public against rendition of legal services by unqualified persons.” Although the definition and terms of ABA Model Rule 5.5 may seem to explicitly outlaw offshoring, the nuance is in the phrase “practice of law.” What exactly does “practicing law” mean and how is it different from provision of law-related supporting services by non-lawyers such as paralegals and law students?

In this regard there is one point of consensus that has emerged through multiple opinions from different State Bar Associations: under no circumstance may a foreign lawyer be contracted, in relation to LPO firms or in any context, to represent a client in Court. However, using this point of agreement as a jumping off point, there remains a great deal of confusion and complex issues to work through. The best domestic analogy to offshoring is temporary contracting. Law firms have been contracting legal services to domestic companies, firms, specialized lawyers and non-lawyers increasingly over the past fifteen years. In response to growing concern over the practice, in 1988 the American Bar Association (ABA) issued Formal Ethics Opinion 88-356 to address the use of temporary lawyers and in 1995 the ABA Commission on Non-lawyer Practice produced a report and recommendations. The concerns raised in relation to domestic contracting of quality assurance and supervision, conflicts of interest, attorney-client privilege and confidentiality, disclosure and client consent are comparable to the dilemmas of offshoring. Based on the proclamations made on domestic outsourcing, it is fair to extrapolate that offshoring is legal in theory, but also dependent on the nature of the services being outsourced and the structure and degree of supervision in the relationship. The burden is on the U.S. attorney engaged to ensure offshoring meets these standards and that he/she does not participate in aiding unauthorized and therefore illegal practice of the law.

Quality Assurance and Supervision

“Ensure that the outsourcing company assists a California Attorney in practicing law, NOT the other way around.”

-Offshore Legal Outsourcing: The Ethical Implications Handout,
Distributed as part of a seminar organized by LawScribe, Inc.

In 2006 the New York Bar Association opined that foreign lawyers who are not certified to practice law in the United States are legally “non-lawyers.” In this regard, Rule 5.3 of the ABA Model Rules requires lawyers have a “direct supervisory authority” over a non-lawyer employed and the lawyer must make reasonable efforts to ensure that the non-lawyer’s conduct is “compatible” with the professional obligations of the lawyer. In taking these two opinions together, it would be logical to extrapolate that a U.S. attorney assumes supervisory responsibilities. However, it is still not completely clear how these rules apply to foreign lawyers who have been hired directly, or through a separate business. According to Mark Tuft, a legal ethics scholar:

“The difficulty lies in instituting measures that give reasonable assurance that foreign lawyers will conform to the rules of professional conduct applicable to the domestic law firm and that the conduct of foreign non-lawyer assistants will be compatible with the U.S. lawyer’s professional obligations.”

Foreign lawyers technically have no legal obligation to American laws. The ethical standards they are bound by may differ from U.S. standards at crucial points; for example, client confidentiality. Furthermore, there is a practical difficulty in providing adequate supervision over an employee working in another country.

The 2006 New York Bar Association Opinion did not state that a U.S. attorney working with foreign lawyers or non-lawyers was responsible to ensure compliance with the Disciplinary Rules of New York, but it did imply obligations of supervision. These include the responsibility for the U.S. lawyer to ensure non-lawyers are competent to perform the tasks, uphold standards of confidentiality, and take reasonable measures to ensure they do not violate New York code.

Confidentiality

“At SDD Global, secured, hack-proof IBM servers and the latest Cisco ASA firewall are used to protect data and systems from internet vulnerabilities. Even more protection is provided by a Linux environment throughout the offices. Electronic access control is provided for all areas of the building, such that no one is able to enter any floor or project area without being specifically authorized to do so, and without a custom-made electronic access card. The offices are virtually paperless, and passwords are required for all data access.”
- Russell Smith, Chairman of SDD Global Solutions

Confidentiality is a fundamental principle of a client-lawyer relationship. ABA Model Rule 1.6 addresses the issue, and a further comment on the rule explicitly states that a lawyer must act to safeguard unauthorized information from lawyers or other people under the lawyer’s supervision that may be working on the case. Offshoring presents specific challenges to confidentiality in terms of security of connection and legality of transferring information. For some back office or “vanilla tasks,” like document review, it is possible for companies to upload documents on a secure Intranet site, have foreign lawyers work on it, and then return it to the client. In this case the foreign lawyers only need limited information and do not need to know the larger context of the case. However, with the trend toward complex patent drafting and legal research, it is necessary for foreign lawyers to be privy to more information. Patent applications can be especially tricky because there exist laws that regulate what technology can be shipped abroad without a license. One way to deal with these issues is to not share any confidential information when outsourcing and instead include hypothetical anecdotes to steer the researcher. Despite these measures (which can be limiting to quality and are by no means foolproof) there remain real concerns of the security of any transaction over the Internet. Security concerns will continue to be a limiting factor to the complexity of work that is offshored.

Disclosure and Client Consent

The sensitivity of information involved in much of the work being outsourced is a natural transition to the ethical issue of disclosure and client consent. ABA Model Rule 7.5(d) “articulates the underlying policy that a client is entitled to know who/what entity is representing the client” Although this suggests full disclosure would be necessary, it is not clear how the duty to inform should actually work in application. To explore the application further, it is helpful to delve into a hypothetical scenario that was recently analyzed in an opinion by the San Diego County Bar Association.

In the scenario two lawyers in California were contracted by a business to defend a complex intellectual property dispute. Both attorneys had limited experience in the field, but they took the case and assured the client they would be able to handle it. Without informing the client, the attorneys contracted on an hourly basis with Legalworks, an LPO firm in India. The attorneys reviewed the work, signed all documents, and proceeded as counsel in court. They billed the client for the work done by Legalworks under the broad category of “legal research” and “preparation of pleadings.” The client won the case and inquired as to how the attorneys developed the case and were able to do it so inexpensively. The attorneys informed the client that virtually all work had been done by Legalworks.

The analysis of this hypothetical situation by the San Diego Bar Association aligns with opinions by other bar associations in concluding that if the work which is to be performed by the outside service is within the client's "reasonable expectation under the circumstances" that it will be performed by the attorney, the client must be informed when the service is "outsourced." The inclusion of a “reasonable expectation,” threshold is helpful, but also leaves room for a great deal of interpretation. “Reasonable expectation” is not a concept that can be permanently defined and instead takes on a fluid movement dependent on changing circumstance and norms. At this time, the decision has been interpreted to mean that for all services, with the exception of “back office” processes, the client should be consulted and consent to an offshoring agreement. This requirement is further colored by the nature of the work being offshored and the level of supervision between the lawyer and offshoring company. In practice, LPO and law firms operate under a working guideline that relates disclosure to the level of supervision and type of work being offshored

Fee Sharing

The ethics of disclosure become even more pronounced when discussing fee sharing. Although the law firm is most likely saving significantly from offshoring, they are under no strict legal obligation to pass these savings onto the client. The guiding principle for all fee sharing, regardless of offshoring, is in ABA Model Rule 1.5. It states: “the fee should be reasonable under the circumstances.” Offering little in terms of specifics, the Rule is somewhat difficult to apply to LPO fee sharing. In practice there have emerged two ways a lawyer can bill for offshored legal services. First, the offshored costs can be billed to the client as “fees.” In this scenario the law firm may add a surcharge outside the services, pass the savings onto the client, or charge a flat fee. The “mark-up” scenario may make sense if the lawyer is billing the client for the supervised work he did. In regard to this scenario, a 2006 Los Angeles Bar Association opinion stated that the lawyer has an obligation to accurately disclose the reason for those fees. The second method of billing is to list offshoring as an expense incurred by the law firm. In this case the bill should represent the actual amount spent on the legal services with no mark up. In this scenario the cost saving is passed onto the client.

The issue of fee sharing is an important ethical issue to discuss as it gets to the heart of what some think will be the LPO revolution of the legal industry. Many cite the profitable pyramid structure based on billable hours of western law firms as the driving force behind LPO. Mark Chandler, the General Counsel of Cisco Systems, describes the traditional law firm model as “the last vestige of the medieval guild system.” People like Mr. Chandler are looking for a more efficient legal industry to combat the growing costs of legal service for big corporations. In this regard LPO presents a solution, but the degree to which it translates into savings can depend on how the change is represented in billing procedures.

Conflicts of Interest

Lawyers have an important duty to identify and resolve conflicts of interest in their legal work. A situation of “concurrent conflict of interest” is defined by ABA Model Rule 1.7 as a time when the representation of one client will be directly adverse to another client or there is risk the representation of one client will be materially limited by lawyer’s responsibilities to another client, former client, third person, or personal interest of the lawyers. ABA Model Rule 1.7 calls on lawyers to develop “reasonable procedures” and suggests in the case of temporary contracting, the responsibility falls primarily on the hiring firm and the actual lawyer performing the work to monitor for conflicts of interest. In a comment on the law, the responsibility of the middleman, or the firm that may be coordinating the temporary contracting, is minimized.

Offshoring complicates the issues of conflicts of interest in several ways. First in many common structures of outsourcing the role of the middleman, or LPO company, is often taking an active role in distributing work assignments and monitoring lawyers performing outsourced work. In this scenario it seems logical the LPO company would need to have a working knowledge and information regarding clients served and their corresponding lawyers. Second, it is hard to determine whether an LPO company or “middleman” working with a firm is thus “associated” with the firm, and precluded from representing a client with which any lawyer in the firm may have a conflict of interest. Third, it is difficult for LPO companies to assess obligations between former and current clients because their contracts are for discrete projects. Fourth, the growing trend for LPO companies to specialize in specific areas of the law, for example patent applications, presents an additional complication. Although it is a desirable trend in regard to expertise, it presents some questions when a firm’s clients may be on opposite sides of disputes. Finally, even if it was possible to interpret ABA Model Rule 1.7 as it has been for temporary lawyers and focus on the responsibility of the foreign lawyer performing the work and the hiring firm, the application does not work. Foreign lawyers cannot be held accountable under U.S. law as temporary lawyers are. This underlying complication brings us to the next issue of discipline.

Discipline

The question of discipline is key to insure protection if there is a problem with offshoring, but it is still not clear what ethical standards an outsourced lawyer will be held accountable to. Darya Pollack aptly phrases the issue regarding discipline writing:

“Are outsourced lawyers bound only by 1) the ethical rules of their home bar; 2) the ethical rules of each state for which they perform services; 3) the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct; or 4) some combination of the above?”

There are problems with applying each of the standards listed above. Using the standards of a lawyer’s home bar is not viable because it is possible there may be differences in ethical rules between countries regarding important issues. It would be similarly impractical to regulate on a state by state basis within the U.S., because outsourced lawyers are likely to practice in more than one state. The best option would be to have all outsourced lawyers bound by the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, or something of its equivalent. Even this situation is a hypothetical as the Model Rules are currently only advisory and if they were to become the standard, it would require State Bar Associations to secede some of their power.

Moving beyond the problem of an ethical standard, there is the question of enforcement. Who would have the right to bring enforcement actions, and where would they be brought? Furthermore, who would they be brought against- the U.S. law firm, the LPO firm/business, or the individual lawyer performing outsourced work? Finally, what would be the consequence of an ethical violation, and how would violations be documented to prevent another outsourcing company from hiring the same lawyer?

The questions regarding enforcement are reflective of the great degree of uncertainty that surrounds the industry. Thus far, these issues have been handled within contracts between LPO companies and clients. As of yet, there has not been a major incident or security breech prompting widespread public outcry, but the first mishandling of information is sure to lead to concerns over disciplinary regulation.

III. CURRENT MECHANISMS

Mechanisms to regulate legal process outsourcing and address the ethical dilemmas discussed have evolved on a variety of levels in recent years. From the legal community there has been slow movement to apply existing regulation to the new industry and tease out the level of compatibility. In this respect, there have also been a few opinions on the specifics of legal offshoring by State Bar Associations in New York, California, and Florida. The business world, quick to seize the opportunity, has been quietly experimenting with different models while punching the numbers in efforts to reduce the bottom line. Leading the way, however, is the LPO industry itself. Recognizing the novelty of their service and the need to legitimize their field, leaders of LPO both in India and the U.S. have pushed forward with training, certification tests, other forms of quality insurance, and guidelines to the ethical implications. The underlying drive is, of course, competition. LPO companies want a peaceful coexistence with the American legal system because it is profitable.

Legal Regulations

“We have not either endorsed it or opposed it”
- Nancy Slonim, American Bar Association
Deputy Director for Policy Communications

The American legal community has yet to take a definitive stance on LPO. This could be reflective of the size and diversity of the legal community: some lawyers are leading the march to India, others are protesting the threat to legal profession, and the majority are uninvolved, or in doubtful disbelief of LPO’s sustainability. Discussion of ethics have revolved around current ABA Model Rules and Formal Ethic Opinions, however, there remain issues regarding ambiguity in the rules and the applicability of these guidelines to offshoring

Model Rules for Professional Conduct and ABA Formal Ethics Opinion 88-356

The Model Rules for Professional Conduct are useful in providing a starting point for analysis, but they fail to address the key ethical issues underlying legal process outsourcing. The first issue is the failure to provide a national definition of “the practice of law.” Although Model Rule 5.5 does address the Unauthorized Practice of Law (UPL) in fairly broad terms, it fails to define clearly what exactly it means, “to practice the law” as opposed to provision of “legal services.” The rule notes instead, “The definition of the practice of law is established by law and varied from one jurisdiction to another.” This makes the Rules extremely ambiguous, as there is extreme diversity between states. Arizona, for example, has no UPL code.
The second issue of the Model Rules is application. It is not clear how they apply to foreign lawyers, or the degree to which they are binding. The rules are currently only adopted by states on a voluntary basis.

Finally, although non-lawyers and domestic contractors are the best analogy to offshoring, they are simply just an analogy. The language of the rules is explicitly and repeatedly limited to the domestic sphere. For example, in discussion of multi-jurisdiction considerations, it is limited to “a lawyer admitted in another United State Jurisdiction.” Although similarities may exist, under the law foreign lawyers are categorized as non-lawyers. However, even existing regulation that addresses non-lawyers was still developed with an intended application to domestic non-lawyers, such as paralegals and law students. In addition to difference in legal status, foreign lawyers introduce variations in geography, time, English language skills, logistics, accountability, and training that raise specific issues and require specific codes.

Formal Ethics Opinion 88-356 was issued in 1988 as a response to the growing number of contracted lawyers. Although it is useful in highlighting the ethical issues shared between domestic contracting and international offshoring, like the ABA Model Rules, it is explicitly limited to domestic temporary lawyers and does not address several of the specific issues that are raised by offshoring.

State Bar Association Ethics Opinions

There have been three formal State Bar Association opinions addressing the specific issue of legal offshoring: New York (August 2006), San Diego (2007), and Florida (September 2007). In June 2006 the Los Angeles Bar Association considered the issue of fee sharing in relation to domestic contracting and issued an opinion that has relevance to offshoring. The opinions are useful in that they contribute to a growing consensus as to how offshoring should proceed. For example, each ruling affirmed that a lawyer “may ethically outsource legal support services to a non-lawyer.” However, issues arise because the opinions left two important definitions ambiguous. Firstly, the opinions compare foreign lawyers at times to domestic contractors and other times non-lawyers, without acknowledging that in reality foreign lawyers fit neither of these descriptions. This lack of acknowledgement manifests itself in a lack of specific regulations. Secondly, although throughout the opinions and a growing body of literature there is a growing consensus that “supervision” is the mitigating factor in offshoring, there are no specific regulations as to what “supervision” entails. The opinions have not recognized the practical reality offshoring presents in terms of time difference, distance, language, and training.
While the opinions are positive steps in that they acknowledge special consideration needs to be made for offshoring, and in some specific ethical considerations the opinions go into great detail, they still are lacking concreteness. Furthermore, they are based on the laws of the individual state and are purely advisory and not binding either in state or national jurisdiction.

LPO Industry Self-Regulation

The LPO industry has grown extremely rapidly in the last two years. Proving itself through high quality work at a low cost, LPO has dispelled many of the myths of legal offshoring throughout the business world. Now people are starting to catch on. Wary of the “dot-com bubble,” the industry is rallying together in attempts to set standards to weed out the “get rich quick” types and act preemptively against negative publicity. Moves are being made both in India, the U.S./U.K, in a growing library of literature and in the on-line community of blogging LPO professionals/customers to push for standards. Through informal dialogue and guidelines, the design of the Global Legal Professional Certification Test, rise of training companies, and push for accreditation and ethics training in the U.S., the LPO industry seeks to push itself without sacrificing quality.

Global Legal Professional Certification Test

In April 2007 Rainmaker, recruitment and training firm that focuses on the LPO industry, introduced the Global Legal Professional (GLP) certification test. Designed in conjunction with three LPO companies: JuriMatrix, Bodhi Global, and Quislex, the GLP is aimed at testing candidates on skills needed in LPO: English fluency, technology and professional skills, personal effectiveness and legal knowledge. The first GLP was administered on September 16th, 2007 in the Indian cities of New Delhi, Bombay, Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad. The GLP website is explicit: “The purpose of the GLP is clear and simple - to put in place a mechanism that enables the industry to identify the talent required to fuel the L.P.O revolution.” The website invites “players” in the LPO industry to support and participate in the program by indicating their ‘acceptance’ of the GLP as a valid mechanism to certify industry talent. With participation, members of the LPO industry gain access to the talent pool, lower recruitment and training costs, and an “auto-application process” that enables test takers to fast track their scores to preferred employers. This test may open up opportunities for the 80,000 lawyers that graduate from Indian law schools each year, and is pushing towards a standard of evaluation. However, although the GLP may present an interesting concept in regard to the idea of a certification test for the LPO industry, it is important to note who is behind the program. Although reputable companies aided in the design of the test, the top companies of the industry were not involved. In order for a certification test have real relevance; a broader network of consultation and input from LPO companies will be necessary. In addition, it may be beneficial to involve the American Bar Association as a way to form a link between a business and legal solution.

Training

“The training period includes weekly tests, in which attorneys must score 85% on every test; the number of tests depends on the complexity of the assignment. On the final test at the end of training, attorneys must score 90% or more to be placed in an actual assignment. An attorney who scores lower can take only one retest. A trainee who does not succeed in the retest is fired. The test performance and scores of each attorney are recorded and a report of results is prepared and kept with that individual’s personnel record; this record is used to evaluate that attorney for higher positions in True Legal and assignments with greater responsibility.”
- Rupali Shah, director of True Legal Partners

The rigorous training regime described by Rupali Shah of the LPO company True Legal Partners, is not standardized procedure throughout the industry. It is, however, indicative of the high standards self-imposed on the industry. To some degree, LPO is self-selecting. The market is very competitive and limited to extremely qualified Indian lawyers. For example, a prominent LPO company, SDD Global, hires 1 out of every 900 applications. The competitive market and rigorous training programs within LPO companies have created a qualified group of employees who are looking to make a career out of LPO. In response, the industry is starting to develop and mature. For example, Pangea3, named the top LPO company of 2007 by Brown and Wilson’s Black Book of Outsourcing, emphasizes building relationships with clients. Their website describes their organizational structure as one where, “Generally, each client has a dedicated team of two or more professionals, who learn the client’s approach to legal and business issues, its risk profile, and its ‘playbook.’” Pangea3’s approach is indicative of an attitude within the industry that aims to go beyond a stereotypical outsourcing relationship. The industry has recognized it is important to invest in long-term capacity building and quality assurance in order to keep out a potential flood of inexperienced, poorly trained, and possible harmful get-rich-quick start-up companies.

Accreditation

The GLP and internal training processes of LPO are both components of the movement towards accreditation. Mark Ross, Director of Development for LawScribe, a LPO company, recently outlined several specific industry regulatory standards he would like to see implemented. The standards cover issues ranging from structure to training. Several address the issue of supervision by suggested standards regarding models of outsourcing that regulate the relationship between U.S./ U.K lawyers and their foreign counterparts. Particularly, Ross would mandate an LPO be required to have a staffed physical presence in the U.S. or UK, would be required to employ at least one qualified U.S. attorney. In regard to training, Ross suggests a requirement to develop a written training program and in-state independent verification of employees. Ross says these measures are nothing more than what is already happening in contracts between LPO companies and clients, but it will be beneficial both economically and in legitimizing the industry to formally implement these standards.
In the absence of formal regulation, many professionals within LPO have developed informal guidelines or checklists for clients interested offshoring. These guidelines are often published on blogs, industry specific on-line journals or news-sites, and contribute to a dialogue that addresses questions of accreditation and standards. Within this dialogue much of the same issues and standards discussed by Mark Ross above are echoed. For example, in January 2008, Tariq Hafeez, President and General Council of LegalEase Solutions, published a post on Rahul Jindal’s Legal Process Outsourcing Blog that included a “Checklist to evaluate an LPO’s LR&R [Legal Research and Writing] Services.” Points covered included whether the LPO is based in the U.S., if it has U.S. trained and licensed attorneys, if the LPO has a training curriculum for its offshore attorneys, and who the curriculum was designed by.

Contracts

The way LPO has been “regulated” thus far is based on contracts. It is through individual contracts between offshoring companies and their clients that many forms of self- regulation and testing have developed. Often contracts will require submissions of a test work sample product, condition payment on correct background check of the company, or even offer a complete refund if the client is not satisfied. Out of necessity the contract must spell out the specific ethical standards of the relationship, as the applicable standards for LPO are not clear. Other provisions in the contracts may include non-disclosure or similar provisions safeguarding the identity of the company in association with LPO.
Even if strictly formal or self-regulatory methods were in place, the contract would remain the legally binding agreement between firms. However, both parties would benefit from having uniform standards across the LPO industry that were simply implemented via contract, rather than rewritten for each new client and varied among LPO companies.

IV. RECOMMENDATIONS

The Legal Process Outsourcing industry is taking steps toward proving its legitimacy as a cost-efficient and high quality answer to the rising cost of legal services. Although many of the benefits are clear, there are still significant ethical issues that must be addressed if the industry is to continue to move forward. The next step on this path must involve movement from both the American legal community and the LPO industry itself to agree on rules guiding both the foreign and American lawyers involved in the industry.

In this regard, I recommend a two-prong approach to move towards comprehensive solution. It should be composed of increased formal ethical regulation and education within the American legal community; as well as accreditation and standardization within the LPO industry.

ABA Formal Ethics Opinion on the Offshoring of Legal Services:

It would be very useful for the American Bar Association to address the ethical issues of offshoring on a national level. Although State Bar rulings are crucial in working towards a consensus, given the jurisdictional issues that arise between states it is necessary for a decision to be made at the national level. Furthermore there are three key issues that should be clarified in an Ethics Opinion:

1) Define of “the practice of law,” and thus unauthorized practice.
2) Specify criteria necessary for adequate “supervision,” in acknowledgement of the special situation of foreign lawyers.
3) Clarify how the ABA Model Rules apply to foreign non-lawyers.
Although in application the value of the opinion will be purely normative, it will be an important first step in moving toward the recognition and acceptance of standards for LPO. The opinion should be complemented with educational seminars made available through State Bar Associations. A model for the program could be the LawScribe Seminar, Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) Ethical Considerations which has been approved for Minimum Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) by the State Bar of California.

Accreditation Standards within the LPO Industry:

LPO should formalize the informal mechanisms of self-regulation already present within the industry. I strongly support the standards outlined by Mark Ross. In this regard, increased interaction and dialogue between LPO companies will become important tools in standardization of the industry for constructive competition. Informal networks, such as blogs and on-line newsletters have already been developed and should continue. In addition, formal interaction is occurring in the form of industry conferences like the upcoming, “India LPO Summit 2008” in New York. Furthermore there should be a standard certification process for individual foreign lawyers engaged in LPO. The Global Legal Professional Certification test may provide a model to work with, however a much broader range of consultation between both Indian and U.S. training organizations, LPO companies, clients and legal communities will be necessary. In this regard, it makes the most sense for development of the certification test to be facilitated by a U.S. based training organization familiar with the U.S. standards, laws, and the nature of the work being outsourced.

V. CONCLUSION

The idea of Legal Process Outsourcing is provocative. For it to be a sustainable industry it will require not only regulation of ethical considerations, but also a change in legal culture. In the legal industry, it will force lawyers to look not only at quality of justice, but the speed with which it is produced. It will challenge and reinvent the standard ethical culture that often develops largely based on face-to-face interaction between lawyers. The commodization of the legal industry is not something easily reconciled in pubic opinion, although it has existed and been developing undetected for sometime. On the other side of the Atlantic, the U.K. has recently passed the Legal Service Bill, which allows the creation of Alternative Business Structures. These structures, according to a summary of the Bill, “will enable lawyers and non-lawyers to work together on an equal footing to deliver legal and other services.” The ramifications of this bill will be a further commodization of the British legal industry.

The United States is likely to follow the United Kingdom’s lead in regard to the commodization of the legal industry and coupled with the issue of outsourcing, a hot political topic; the result it could be inflammatory. Usual associations conceive of law as a solution or regulation to outsourcing rather than a part of the trend. If LPO is to win over the support of American legal community and eventually the general public, it is crucial for a comprehensive solution to be developed that will bring together both the American lawyers and the legal offshoring industry. In this way Legal Process Outsourcing can not only coexist, but improve the American legal services industry.

Blackbook of Outsourcing: 2008 Perception Study results (LPO)

2008-06-30T09:35:00.002+05:30

2008 TOP TEN LEGAL PROCESS OUTSOURCING (LPO)
1 Clutch Group
2 CPA Global
3 Integreon
4 Law-Scribe
5 Mindcrest
6 QuisLex
7 SDD Global
8 Cobra Legal Solutions
9 Bodhi Global
10 iDiligence

Source: http://theblackbookofoutsourcing.com/vendors-lpo-2008.htm

Press Release: Brown-Wilson Group's 2008 LPO vendor survey

2008-06-30T09:27:00.002+05:30

Brown-Wilson Group's 2008 LPO vendor survey ranks CPA number one in Contract & Legal Document Review, Innovation, Trust, Reliability and Brand Image
London, 25 June 2008—CPA, the leading provider of outsourced legal support services and the world's top intellectual property (IP) management specialist, announced today that it has been awarded the top ranking in the "Contract & Legal Document Review" category and the number two overall position in the 2008 Black Book of Outsourcing’s Top Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) Vendors survey.

The Black Book survey, produced by the Brown-Wilson Group, Inc, ranks providers of outsourced sales processes and services. Over 80 LPOs worldwide competed for Top Ten honours in 2008.

"Our survey results demonstrate that CPA has clearly impressed clients with its high level of innovation, trust, and reliability," said Doug Brown, managing partner of Brown Wilson Group and co-author of The Black Book of Outsourcing (Wiley Publishers). "Law firms and corporate legal departments look closely at these critical areas when choosing which legal process outsourcing providers with whom to partner."

The Black Book survey also lays out the increasingly compelling case for LPO. "The principal benefits to the legal sector of any form of outsourcing remain increased levels of service, freeing management time, access to expertise, and cost reductions," the survey concludes.

In addition to its overall number two ranking and its number one ranking in the contract and legal document review category, CPA ranked first in the following individual categories:

Innovation: Vendor technology helps clients compete more effectively and generate larger revenues/profits.
Training: Leadership provides significant and meaningful training opportunities for employees and clients.
Trust: Trust in vendor’s enterprise reputation to effectively deliver ideal business results
Reliability: Online reliability is maximized and downtimes are minimized
Brand Image: Maintains high image and reputation so that customer law firms, corporations and other buyers of LPO services openly reference their LPO as a team member
Marginal Value Adds: Provides true business transformation opportunities to the buyer

Commented Chris Veator, CPA’s Executive Vice President of Legal Services: "CPA’s high rating by Black Book as one of the world’s top LPO consultants is a clear acknowledgement of the superior service we offer our clients and the rapidly growing strength of our outsourcing offering. To be recognized by our clients is the true test of our quality and the value of our services. "

Veator continued: "At a time when the global economy is entering uncharted territory, more companies are aggressively seeking innovative ways to increase their capacity while reducing the cost of doing business; outsourcing is a cutting edge solution to these challenges. For CPA to be ranked as number one in the categories of Trust, Innovation, and Training affirms our commitment and investments in being the LPO provider of choice. The rankings illustrate that CPA is the right choice for companies looking to outsource elements of their legal operations to third-party providers."

The Black Book of Outsourcing is the foremost ranking authority and most extensive perception study on outsourcing firms. Outsourcing firms are ranked by a rigorous three-step process to ensure candid and thorough performance data. Overall, CPA was ranked second out of more than 80 firms worldwide and is considered a top-tier vendor in the LPO industry.

About CPA: With clients in over 100 countries, CPA is a leading provider of outsourced legal support services and the world's top intellectual property (IP) management specialist. Founded in 1969, CPA Global provides lifecycle management services for intellectual property such as patent, design and trademark searching, watching, renewals, and portfolio strategy. CPA is also a leader in the growing market for outsourced contract management and litigation support services, helping law firms and corporations to realize value by managing risk, cost and capacity. CPA employs over 1,100 people in 16 offices in 8 countries. For further information visit: www.cpaglobal.com/legal_services

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Media Contacts

Rob Stichbury, Business Development Director 01784 495751 rstichbury@cpaglobal.com

James Clasper, Brunswick Group, 020 7404 5959 jclasper@brunswickgroup.com

CNBC TO COVER LEGAL OUTSOURCING

2008-06-20T21:10:00.001+05:30

This weekend, CNBC-TV 18, the leader in India business news, will be covering legal outsourcing. In its new program, Up South, the television network will examine the rise of SDD Global Solutions in Mysore, as well as two other companies in this upcoming city that Infosys chose for its largest facility. The program will report on how and why SDD Global also chose Mysore as the headquarters for its operations, which include offices in New York, London, and Bangalore. SDD Global is reporting a resurgence in its fortunes, with a doubling of client work and an influx of new recruits. This came after emerging successfully from what company sources say was a “flattering but unwelcome” take-over attempt by a large investor. SDD Global’s latest high-profile client is Mohamed Al Fayed, owner of Harrod’s in London and the Hotel Ritz in Paris. Indian attorneys in Mysore have been busy working on legal and factual issues relating to the alleged assassination of Princess Diana and Mr. Al Fayed’s son, Dodi. Whoever said legal work is boring doesn’t know where to work! CNBC’s report on SDD Global, which will be available worldwide, will air in India on Saturday at 11:30am, and again on Sunday at 7pm.

LPO Summit Sep 2008

2008-06-13T00:02:00.004+05:30

I provided initial consultation for ACI's LPO Summit to be held in New York on Sep 15-16, 2008. The final agenda has come out very well, and there is promise from ACI that unlike several me-too LPO conferences being organised of late, LPO vendor population will be kept to only the best and the brightest.

A list of sessions and brief contents are as follows:
Pre-conference Workshop
Getting to Grips with Outsourcing your Legal Services Offshore: The A-Z of Negotiating, Enacting and Managing Outsourcing Relationships
Evaluating the type of work that can or should be outsourced
- Support practices versus front office/client facing services
• Examining the current sourcing methods and models used for legal outsourcing
- Onshore – captive
- Onshore –outsourcing
- Offshore – own captive
- Offshore - outsource
• Enacting an outsourcing initiative
- Sourcing and selecting a provider/partner
- Negotiating an outsourcing agreement that complies with your obligations for privacy and client confidentiality
- Change management - achieving firm-wide buy in and a cohesive outsourcing strategy
• Establishing benchmarks and metrics to measure success or failure

The State of the LPO Market: Current Trends, Viability and Adoption Rates
• Identifying the primary drivers behind legal outsourcing for:
- In-house counsel
- Law firms
• Examining recent trends in the type of services being outsourced
- Practice or administrative support functions
- Legal processes
- Specialized legal services
• Quantifying the value proposition of legal outsourcing
- Projected cost savings
- Improved resource allocation
- Revenue growth
- Increased competitive advantage
• Evaluating the scope and length of outsourcing projects – does this equate to increased confidence in legal process outsourcing?

LPO Business Models: Determining which Makes Most Sense for your Business Needs and Goals
• Examining the associated costs, cost savings and tax advantages for:
- Domestic captive
- Offshore captive
- Third party LPO service providers
• Considerations when leveraging a global labor pool
- Hiring and managing remote workers
- Controlling process, quality and training
• What are the typical transition processes and timelines?
• Evaluating the viability of a domestic captive center versus an offshore center
- Lower costs available in the mid-west
- Time zone advantage
- Opportunity to employ local resources
• Determining whether India is an offshore location for your business goals
- Cost analysis
- The availability of a qualified labor pool
- The rate of attrition
• What other offshore locations are being utilized or should be considered?

Case Studies: Why In-House Counsel Have, or Have Not, Bought into LPO

Determining the Hallmarks of a Successful Outsourcing Initiative - Selecting Services to Outsource
• Identifying the characteristics of services that have been outsourced thus far:
- High demand
- Scalable
- Lower risk
• Evaluating the type of work that is most susceptible to outsourcing
- Corporate
- Intellectual property and patent litigation
- Litigation and e-discovery
- Research
- Database technology
• Where have the greatest efficiencies and cost savings been realized?
• Determining what services to outsource first, and how to know when you’re ready to expand that scope
- Practice support services versus legal processes

Papering the Transaction - Best Practices for Structuring and Negotiating your Outsourcing Agreement
• Structuring confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements to ensure your obligations for client confidentiality and privacy are met
• Beyond the master agreement – establishing service-level benchmarks
- What type of service level agreements are appropriate?
- What current benchmarks or provisions are being used in the market?
- Establishing penalties for breach
- Highlighting specific examples of service level agreements
• Defining IP rights
- What is the industry standard?
- How to tweak for specific circumstances
• Audit rights – what should the contract demand or allow for?
• Drafting provisions that will ensure knowledge transfer and a timeframe for phasing it in
• Leveraging U.S.-India tax agreements when constructing your outsourcing contract
• What to do if a security breach occurs
- When to notify clients
- Restoring client confidence
- Determining who bears fault – and steps to take thereafter
• Thinking ahead – incorporating wind down provisions
- What happens when terminating the relationship –what is the process?
- Different termination scenarios

Questions to Ask and Key Expectations to Establish Before Selecting a LPO Service Provider
• When establishing an LPO relationship, buyers tend to focus on the answers to three key questions:
- How much will it cost?
- How well will the provider be able to deliver?
- What’s it going to be like to work with them?

Achieving Firm Wide Buy-In: Incorporating Change Management to Successfully Develop and Execute Your Legal Outsourcing Strategy
• Communicating the advantages of building offshore resources as a means to achieve overall resource allocation efficiency
• Securing appropriate management buy-in to aid in the successful adoption of legal outsourcing
• Overcoming employee feelings around a loss of control – strategies for getting users to adapt and embrace new ways of working
• Instilling acceptance of change within your in-house counsel or firm to overcome resistance to legal outsourcing

Ethical Considerations when Outsourcing Legal Services
• Examining the ethical issues regarding outsourcing legal work to India
- Unauthorized practice of law
- Duty to supervise
- Attorney-client privilege
- Confidentiality
- Client conflicts of interest
- Data and personnel security
- Export control compliance (patent specific)
- Document retention
- Billing issues for private practitioners
• State Bar Association issued opinions regarding the outsourcing of legal services and the unauthorized practice of law
• Liability questions with respect to malpractice coverage

Preserving Quality of Service and Work Product in LPO
• Developing a risk allocation framework to control or mitigate the risks surrounding LPO
• Controlling offshore operations remotely – incorporating strategies to overcome quality control challenges:
- Cultural differences
- Linguistic issues
- Training
• Best practices for handling day-to-day operations
- Instituting and maintaining proper communication channels for daily administration and quality controls
- Resolving problems and extreme situations while avoiding business disruption
- Tried and tested methods and metrics to evaluate and monitor quality, and to ensure accountability
• Establishing conflict resolution procedures
- What you need to know about utilizing commercial dispute resolutions overseas to enforce commercial rights and litigation
• Business continuity planning and disaster recovery to protect customer and company information in your partner’s hands

Avoiding the Potential Pitfalls in Litigation where Work has been Outsourced

Preventing Service Performance Issues Caused by Third Party Provider Employees
• Examining potential vendor personnel problems which could negatively impact outsourced services
- Unqualified hires
- Attrition
- Poor performance
- Lack of motivation
• Incorporating service performance into your outsourcing agreement to prevent vendor personnel issues
- Requisite skill covenants
- Skill set requirements
- Screening requirements
- Anti-turnover provisions
- Incentive bonuses
- Removal rights
- Security levels
- Indemnification requirements
• Incentivizing vendors to select and maintain an appropriate workforce to satisfy your organization’s goals in outsourced services
- Implementing discretionary work as a way to offer career development and prevent attrition

Infrastructure and Technology Requirements for Successful Legal Outsourcing
• Practical explanations and advice on the types of solutions and technology being used within legal outsourcing
• Examining the basic mechanics of linking two organizations that can be half way around the world
- WAN/LAN (Wide Area Network/Local Area Network)
- VPN (Virtual Private Network)
• Security measures for protecting confidential information
• Training staff on the technology platform to be used to send and receive work

CLE credits from the bars of New York and California area available.

Apparently NSA Reviews Offshored Legal Work!

2008-05-31T06:43:00.005+05:30

Apparently the National Security Agency can potentially provide an independent, albeit unsolicited, review of work done by LPO firms!

I first read about a federal suit filed by a Bethesda, MD firm against a legal offshoring firm at this post on legaltimes blog. This is where it gets interesting: a co-defendent in the lawsuit is President George W. Bush (yay, yay, yay!).

Joseph Hennessey, name partner at Newman McIntosh & Hennessey, turned to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on May 7 seeking a ruling on the outsourcing of privileged client data that may be subject to eavesdropping by the U.S. government.

Quick on the facts of the case is here. A blog response by Pangea3 is here.

A potential implication of the potential shortcoming of the Fourth Amendment as applicable to attorney-client confidentiality in any cross border transaction, not just outsourcing, is available as a comment here:

If the DC and MD bar follow Hennessey's recommendations, we should expect to see major fallout throughout the entire legal industry - not just the outsourcing industry. And given that the amount of money at stake in cross border transactions and in enforcing contractual rights or U.S. judgments overseas dwarfs the amount of money at stake with outsourcing, it will not just be outsourcing companies that lose out. It will be any law firm with a foreign office and any business in the U.S. that engages in foreign commerce.

Now, some fun facts:
Fact: US Elections are here and it is not necessary that everyone (in Bethesda, MD) likes President Bush.
Fact: Benford's law of controversy, that states "Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available."
Fact: The lawsuit is wonderful free marketing for the firm and the defendent(s).
Tip for LPOs: Bid for Hennessey's work on this case!

Simple recommendation: Obtain your clients' consent if you are considering using outsourcing on their matters. "Caveat Emptor" the client if they ask you to use outsourcing.

Finally, if the NSA does review offshored legal work, that can't be too bad!