Analyst Report on the LPO "industry"

Update: Joy London, brought the report I comment on below to the blogosphere. Check her diligently written post on the report.

Valuenotes, recently published a report, titled "Offshoring Legal Services to India". The report costs USD 395, I just wish I had that kind of money to buy and comment on the report.

For the starters, I'm not very in agreement with the following numbers highlighted by the report:

• Currently, legal services offshoring from India generates $61 million in revenues; this is expected to grow nearly 10 times to reach $605 million by 2010 and cross $I billion by 2015.
• ValueNotes estimates the current employment in the Indian legal services offshoring segment at around 1,800, but expects this to grow to 24,000 by 2010.

Now, lets do some high school math. 1800 people earning $61 million. Ahem! So that is $34,000 per person per year employed in the industry. At a normally accepted figure of 2000 working hours per person per year, the billing rate comes to about $17. Couple of things:

1. I don't think the players mentioned in the report (see below) employ 1800 people.

• Law Firm Captives: dedicated centers of international law firms like Lexadigm, Intellevate and NewGalexy.
• Corporate Captives: In-house legal departments of companies like GE, Cisco, Oracle, Dupont.
• Third party "niche" vendors: focus on providing only legal services, such as IP PRO, Patent Metrix, Pangea3, Mindcrest and Quislex.
• Third party Multiservice BPOs: offer offshore legal services along with other services, and include the likes of Evalueserve, Datamatics, WNS and Manthan

Evalueserve with about 150 people (or probably lesser) in the intellectual property division (the only offering from Evalueserve that falls under legal outsourcing) is the biggest group in the space in the country. And they're 150 today, not for the entire past year. Other players are much smaller. The average number of employees that these companies would have had (those who contributed to the "$61 million") is not more than 25 people per company. So we'd need about 72 players. Heh! The report primarily mentions only 16 of them. The rest are probably imaginary shops and thus imaginary revenues.

2. $17 average effective billing rate for a really nascent industry? Someone pinch me!

I'd like to see more comments on the report. Comments solicitied.

"Challenges" for LPO

Now, no industry has had an all rosy run all through. LPO is no different. Economic Times carries a story, titled "Legal outsourcing - bubble or reality?" mentioning a few of the challenges for the "sector". Well, I think the reporter recently took the Excessively Catchy Headlines 101 course. Consider a few of the challenges mentioned in the story:

• The most important challenge to the newly-born sector is the need for Indian lawyers to pass US Bar exams, conflict of interest rules and data security. - Pass bar exams? Really? For what kind of outsourced legal services is that required? So this is a non-issue at least at the end of the spectrum the current players are operating in. For higher end services, yes more familiarity with the laws governing the client's jurisdiction are required. I use this blog to predict that a lot of the "first batches" at the LPO providers will proceed for higher education / certification abroad. That's just "evolution" - even in IT/BPO people go for domain training - not a challenge. Conflict of interest - OK, you have a point. But conflict of interests are as old as commerce itself, so there are ways to deal with it. Next? Data Security? If the reporter meant Export Control Regulations governing the nature of work ("national security concerns", and the like) that can be sent overseas, this is virtually a non-issue. The other pie, that can be outsourced is too big, so chill! If the reporter meant data security at the LPO provider premises, hey did you hear about the success with which the IT industry has implemented security standards. How much of rocket science is porting those to new - LPO - premises?
• On the flip-side, the Indian Advocates Act, which deals with the professional conduct of lawyers, does not support work for other countries. - Frankly, from my conversation with the numerous graduates from premier law schools in India, current passouts don't really scream with joy at the prospect of working for the Indian law firms. Bad pay, bad work ethic, bad growth, "rut, essentially" - their words, not mine. So I can bet here that given a good working environment, learning and growth opportunities, many graduates wouldn't even want to be a part of the Bar. Yes, the Indian lawyers with good practices - own or otherwise - may need to think about it. But not many of those senior lawyers join LPO shops anyway. So much for the Indian Advocates Act and Bar Council Rules.
• There is a strong political opposition in the US against outsourcing as may affect the livelihood of US attorneys may also serve as a roadblock. - Yeah, and we never heard of opposition to IT outsourcing and BPO, did we? Or probably the reporter was on break when all that happened. Bottomline is, if outsourcing of legal work saves money for the attorneys - both at law firms and corporations - they will outsource. The volume and nature of work that is outsourced may vary (and is headed northwards with each passing day), but outsource they will and they do. Period.

So, there really is no bubble that will get burst. Hey reporter, look for a new journalism school, this one isn't taking you anywhere like this!

LPO: Blue-eyed boy of KPO!

ASKED for a sound-check at a function in Delhi this month, Bill Gates eschewed the “1,2,3...” favoured by ordinary mortals. “One billion, 2 billion...,” he counted. They think big, these IT moguls, and especially, these days, in India.

ASKED to develop a story on something as broad as "India's IT and remote-service industries", The Economist chose to mention only about outsourcing of legal services amongst myraid of outsourced services that are loosely classified as KPO.

The story talks about the billions of IT/Technology dollars being pumped into India by biggies of the league of Microsoft and Cisco. Interestingly the growth is limited by a factor that seems counter-intuitive:

“The only thing that limits us in India,” Mr Gates told the local press, “is the speed at which we can recruit.”

This is great news, when read in conjunction with the big numbers about the talent pool in India. If so much is not enough, the Indian opportunity must be HUGE! On a lighter note, we don't expect the leaders of some fanatical political outfits to use Mr. Gates statement to persuade families to have more kids!

Very amusingly for people like me - interested in watching the "sector": Legal Process Outsourcing - the story talks about only LPO in addition to BPO and IT Services outsourcing. And that's not quite surprising, for the opportunity presented by LPO is really big and lucrative. Consider the following:

The law, in fact, illustrates how vast is the untapped potential market. About $250 billion is spent on legal services world-wide, about two-thirds of it in America, and as yet only a tiny proportion goes offshore. Forrester, a research outfit, has estimated that, by last year, 12,000 legal jobs had moved offshore, and forecast that this will increase to 35,000 by 2010. India, with its English-language skills and common-law tradition is well-placed to secure a big share of the business. It is not just a question of “paralegal” hack work such as document-preparation. Sanjay Kamlani, of Pangea3, a small Indian firm, calls it “real lawyering”—drafting contracts and patent applications, research and negotiation. His clients are both big law firms and in-house legal teams.

India's fundamental attraction has not changed since it first drew software developers: fantastic cost savings. With American lawyers costing $300 an hour or more, Indian firms can cut bills by 75%.

We've seen the above numbers earlier too, but what is worth a second mention is the size of savings that outsourcing of legal work to India can bring. Even with a naive calculation of saving 75% of an annual budget of $250 billion, we're talking of saving about $190 billion ! Of course, not all of the $250 billion is "outsourcable", but even if 1% of the savings were to come from outsourcing legal work to India, we're still talking about $2 billion. This is a big enough number to wake up General Counsels of large corporations and Partners at law firms. And the ever increasing number and size of LPO outfits is indeed a "Good morning GC, this is India calling, your draft is ready!"

High End is High on Talent

Economic Times carries an article titled, "Islands in the Stream", discussing the pedigree of people working at higher end of the outsourcing spectrum. LPO, of course, is counted among a space towards the higher end.

Pangea3, a small legal process outsourcing (LPO) based in Mumbai, has 23 lawyers from top law schools in its staff of 30. The IQ level in these companies would match the best of the Wall Street firms or even the consulting firms, such is the concentration of the talent.

With such intellectual bandwidth, the companies also have to work hard to keep them busy. The uber teams do complex work, which require an understanding of cutting edge technology and business. For example, the IP team in Evalueserve does patent drafts, patent analysis and technology analysis, work which requires sound understanding of technology. Similarly, the lawyers at Pangea3 could be working on a 300 page contract draft of a JV agreement, or some cutting edge patent research for Yahoo while the Inductis team could be tackling a complex analytics problem for a Fortune 500 financial services company. “We need the high bandwidth talent because they learn things very quickly, are able to identify the business problems very fast, and then also solve them. Plus they are able to move from project to project very quickly,” says Lalit Wangikar, VP-India Consulting Staff, Inductis.

As I can tell first hand, the thing about learning things very quickly, ability to identify business problems very fast, and the ability to solve them is very important for the success of projects. The commonly used word for this - Learnability!

Take lawyers for example. Pangea3’s Kamlani estimates that an lawyer in India costs around $12,000 whereas the same person will cost anywhere between $1,50,000 to 20,000 in US. Similarly, an engineer in US would cost the company anywhere between $55,000 to 75,000, whereas in India an average salary would be around $ 18,000.

(See the previous post on the compensation in LPO.)

High End is High Paying

Financial Express today carries an article titled, Indian BPOs fight US court battles. Among the usual numbers and names are some interesting and exciting findings, some that will make more investors and entrepreneurs to think about setting an LPO shop in India.

Just 700 people [in the LPO space in India presently], employed across 50-60 companies in the country command up to $125 per hour to generate business worth $70 million per annum. That's higher than the 2004 revenues of $60.5 million generated by EXLServices, one of the largest BPOs in India employing 5000 people.
...
In fact, for the sector, legal outsourcing is one of the most lucrative businesses. At an average billing rate of $75 per hour, just 700 LPO employees generate a business of $420,000 (Rs 1.8 crore) every day.
...
And of course the higher billing rate to the clients does translate into higher remuneration (may not be a directly propotionate number).

It's well paying too. Sanjay Kamlani, Co-CEO, Pangea3 told FE: "Lawyers can earn between Rs 1-10 lakh per annum. Engineers, medical practitioners and PhDs are in great demand as they are required for filing patents related to their fields. They earn between Rs 4-8 lakhs per annum depending upon experience." Outsourcing legal work to India helps US law firms operate 24x7. Not to forget the cost savings. Said Ashish Gupta, country manager, Evalueserve: "Drafting a patent in US costs around $8-10,000. In India, it can be done at less than half the cost. There is huge market potential as more than 300,000 patent applications are filed in the US every year."

More Numbers and Nature of Players

An article from The Outsourcing Forum, titled, "US legal services firms test offshore outsourcing" (dated, but relevant nonetheless).

The article ends on a gloomish note (below), but hey, LPO is expected to generate revenues to the tune of $300 million by 2010 and $1 billion by 2015. Keep it coming, baby! Oops, legal professionals are supposed to be more sophisticated ;-)

The LPO market is unlikely to experience the high rates of growth projected for the knowledge process outsourcing industry. Aggarwal points to the risk-averse nature of the legal profession and the need for client confidentiality as reasons why legal services may not be offshored in large volumes. Echoing these views, Parikh feels that captive centers have a better chance of surviving than third-party vendors because “there are liabilities that US lawyers may not want to take on.”

LPO - The term catches on!

The Times of India carries an article, titled, Take this!: After BPO and KPO, it's LPO, and briefly mentions the relevant numbers. What's more important is that the term Legal Process Outsourcing - LPO - is catching on. And I used to wonder, how terms are coined and virally accepted. This is how!

We're not a Law Firm!

... is the disclaimer that every provider of outsourced legal services from India uses. The reason is not hard to find, Yahoo! News article, titled, "India rides outsourcing boom to capture legal work from abroad", quotes a few such firms:

"We are not a law firm though our team comprises of lawyers," the company says on its website. "We do not provide any legal advice or render any legal opinion. Our purpose is to aid and supplement your work."
The distinction is deemed important as clients may not be happy to know that the firm they retain does not do their work.
Also, there are laws in the United States that prohibit legal assistants or paralegals from giving legal advice or representing clients in court as attorneys.

... but we provide a working environment as any top law firm, says Sanjay Kamlani of Pangea3.

Pangea3's Kamlani said that unlike a call center operation, the employees in legal outsourcing firms do not work night shifts, which helps to attract talent.
"During job interviews, we tell candidates you don't do night shifts. But the hours are going to be what they are going to be in a top Indian law firm. And keep your cellphone on because your client may call you at two in the morning," Kamlani said.

In short, LPO firms are doing the work of top law firms, sans the excessive formality, shall we say!

Written Communication...

... is among the most important parameters tested in potential recruits in LPO companies. The reason is not difficult to understand, most of the deliverables are written (with the exception of a few "verbal reports" - requested by clients looking to avoid an "electronic trail").

Economic Times carries an article, titled, "Training in technical language must for KPO services", talking about just that - written communication.

Here, fluency in communication, especially written communication, becomes imperative as employees are essentially using judgement to interpret data in areas like research; or case law in the field of legal outsourcing. “With no clear definition of right or wrong, the manner in which a sentence is constructed, the nature of language used may play a critical role in overall perceptions of quality of service delivered,” he says.

...

Training in technical language is considered an essential part of KPO services, since the industry recruits both professionally-trained and mainstream graduates who, often under the guidance of US-trained experts, undertake specialised high-end work.

...

Communication is, therefore, an area that is being tested at the recruitment stage and then fine-tuned through on-the-job soft skills training sessions. “When the candidates come in for an interview, they are given written tests to check their skills in this area. There is a common training programme and in this too, there is a provision for written communication skills,” says Kishore Mirchandani, president, Outsource Partners International, New York, US, which is an accounting and tax process outsourcing firm.

Goes without saying, efforts must be expended on conducting a training on written communication for people who can articulate!

LPO aka High End Outsourcing!

If billing rates are any metric for where in the spectrum of outsourced services, does a particular service lie, LPO related work is right on the top. Financial Express article at the link,
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=106310, mentions going rates of $30-70 for legal outsourcing related services and as high as $125 for patent research related work!

Whoa!

Move over SENSEX, LPO is here!

Let's begin by asking a simple question: Which Asset Management Company (AMC) in India (heck, anywhere in the world) can give you 500% returns? None? What about 1000%? None? Now, what about 2000%? Well, not an AMC but LPO business can yield that kind of profits!

Don't take my word for it, quoting from this article, titled "Legal outsourcing: the next big thing", that appeared in The Economic Times:

The legal outsourcing opportunity, never mind its size, is one that could be extremely profitable. Consider this — even if one pays a good lawyer up to Rs 40,000-50,000 per month, which would translate to a mere $5 per hour cost; at a billing rate of $100 per hour, that translates into 2000% profits.

And, we are also talking about volumes:

Mr Natarajan agrees that for some jobs, the billing rate could be as high as $100 per hour. Presuming 100,000 legal jobs coming to India by 2015, this translates into a potential $20bn opportunity for India by 2015.

Mr Natarjan doubts that figure, giving his own estimate of $5bn. Sunil Mehta, VP —research, Nasscom, admits cautiously that huge opportunity could potentially exist but, he adds, that India needs to open up its legal services and amend its Partnership Act.

Well, both $5bn or $20bn, or anywhere in between, is a large opportunity! The article further talks about legislative changes for which the NASSCOM needs the government's help:

Nasscom, on its part, is lobbying with government to argue for reciprocal opening up of the services sector at the WTO. Mr Mehta says there are opportunities not only in the legal sector, but other services areas, such as accounting.

I hope and wish this were to be true. Are you also wondering if there are any LPO company stocks that you could buy? I am!

Writing History

I think I can stop laughing now! This post by Shyster (he is becoming my favorite blawger - law blogger - now!), is hilarious. The post discusses a recent article (see posts below, especially, this one) by Wall Street Journal about the latest in outsourcing, Legal Process Outsourcing, outsourcing of legal work to low cost, high quality destinations like India.

On the skeptic side, the article quotes a senior partner at a patrician law firm:

"Gregg Kirchhoefer, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis of Chicago, one of the more prestigious and profitable American firms, estimates it could be 50 years before lawyers in India do more than "routine, prosaic" American legal work.

Well, without saying too much, take my word for it, this one will go down the history. What was Gregg thinking? Think of what Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM in 1943, was contemplating when he said, “I think there is a world market for five computers.” Or, like the urban myth by Bill Gates, who said in 1981 that "640KB ought to be enough for anyone".

When they say, you can watch history being made, they are not wrong!

FT on Legal Outsourcing

After WSJ, its the turn of Financial Times, to talk about Legal Process Outsourcing. In an article titled, US law firms outsource to India, FT reports:

US companies and law firms have started to ship legal work to India - services such as case study research, review and analysis of legal documents, contracts, patent applications and even the drafting of contracts.

Pangea3, launched in Mumbai in February with 15 lawyers and one client, now has 30 trained professionals and roughly the same number of clients, including Yahoo, five other Fortune 1000 companies and a number of Manhattan law firms.

(The rest of the article is available only to subscribers of FT)

Wall Street Journal takes note of LPO!

http://pangea3.com/images/WSJ_29Sep2005.pdf is an article titled, "Legal Services Enter Outsourcing Domain", by Eric Bellman and Nathan Koppel, Staff Reporters of the WSJ.

The article talks about providers of legal services, such as Pangea3, and large corporations running patent divisions out of India, such as DuPont.

"Short of anything where you have to physically be there or sign on the dotted line, we can do it",says Sanjay Kamlani, co-chief executive officer of Pangea3, a New York-based legal outsourcingfirm that opened shop a year ago and already has more than 25 lawyers in India and over 20 U.S.clients.

The article further talks about the cost savings, quality work and focus on activities core to business, that some of the clients of Pangea3, such as technology companies such as Roamware, Internet companies such as DirectoryM and other corporates such as Trico Marine, attained while working with Pangea3.

The article comments on the outcomes of legal services getting cheaper, while retaining the work product quality.

Indeed, outsourcing could ultimately change the way legal work is done in Western countries, industry analysts and company executives say. They expect it to free up American and British lawyers from time-consuming paperwork, allowing small firms to take on bigger cases -- while cutting the number of legal jobs needed in the U.S. Some suggest it could even encourage companies and individuals to become more litigious by lowering the costs of filing lawsuits.

So far, outsourcing has created as many as 12,000 legal jobs world-wide, according to ForresterResearch. The Cambridge, Mass., firm predicts that number could shoot up to 29,000 in 2008,with most of those jobs going to India.

Among some sceptic comments regarding the future of Legal Process Outsourcing are the who-wants-to-go-first comments from large law firms like Reed Smith LLP:

But that attitude may change once major companies grow comfortable using Indian lawyers. "Law firms don't want to be the first to embrace the trend," says Philadelphia lawyer Ajay Raju, who advises companies doing business in India. They figure, "Let others get burned first," he says. But he says he plans to propose that his firm, Reed Smith LLP, which has about 1,000 lawyers, start using lawyers in India for litigation support and other discrete tasks. After all, he says, "Why have a $300-per-hour lawyer do due diligence when it can be done [more cheaply] by someone else?"

The article finally discusses the argument by providers in the LPO space, that offshoring and outsourcing is not different from on-shore outsourcing, when it comes to quality on the provider's part and accountability on the client's.

So, all and sundry, Go Offshore! Outsource!

Fed Rate Hikes and Offshoring of Legal Work

Terry Corbell, a Seattle area management consultant writes about the impact of fed rate hikes on expensive services, such as legal work. To be able to operate comfortably in the event of a recession caused by the hikes, offshoring of legal work would be inevitable. Terry thus advocates acquiring skills that may help law firms in pulling a successful offshoring arrangement:

Making economic forecasts can be tricky. A lot depends on unanticipated events and human behavior. There are limitless variables to consider and all of them aren’t publicized in government reports.

For example, what will be the impact of legal offshoring? Yes, you read right. Legal offshoring. The U.S. has nearly 900,000 attorneys and paralegals, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor, but are you aware that your legal fees might be kept low because of law firm outsourcing?

That’s right, according to a published report quoting Evalueserve. The Indian business and legal research firm believes 1,300 Indians now perform legal research for U.S. law firms to the tune of $52 million. Exponentially, that means in 10 years, U.S. law firms will outsource $970 million of work – just another example of why it’s important to develop management skills and become the chief decision-maker.

Valuemart Info acquires Tejas Infoscripts

Source: Webindia123.com

Valuemart Info Technologies Ltd. said Monday that the company has acquired a 74 percent stake in Bangalore-based business process outsourcing (BPO) firm Tejas Infoscripts Private Ltd.
Post acquisition, Tejas will be a subsidiary of Valuemart Info Technologies, said a statement issued to the Bombay Stock Exchange.

"The acquisition will give us a head-start in the fast growing legal BPO segment," said C.K. Vasudevan, director of Valuemart Info Technologies.

Tejas Infoscripts is a BPO with a focus on the legal domain. The company's services help overseas law firms to increase their service value by freeing up valuable time for attorneys to concentrate on specialised legal services.

Typically, services outsourced include back office transactions, data management, E-filing, and research activities. The company currently employs 50 people and is poised to grow to 150 people by March 2006.

Tejas Infoscripts is also building a contemporary service platform for BPO services for banking, financial services and insurance verticals, said the statement

Market Size and Growth Plans

Some snippets from here and there about companies operating in the LPO space...

http://www.rediff.com/money/2005/sep/19bpo.htm
Pangea3 Global co-CEO Sanjay Kamlani told PTI that the company will be raising up to $2 million to fund its expansion plans. "We will be raising the money by the end of this year to fund our expansion plans which include shifting the existing Mumbai office to a much larger facility, expanding our operations in the US and opening a new office in Bangalore or Delhi," he said.

Kamlani said the company would be recruiting an additional 120 people which would take the number of its employees to 150, a majority of them lawyers.

A recent National Association of Software and Service Companies-report pegged the market potential for legal outsourcing from the US at $3-4 billion.

http://www.siliconindia.com/shownewsdata.asp?newsno=29397

"While the size of the Indian legal BPO segment is still very small, the success achieved by early movers has established the proof-of-concept, which is the key to unlocking the potential in new waves of offshore-outsourcing. "

Global spending on legal services is estimated to be at least over $250 billion, with the U.S. accounting for more than two-thirds of the market.

The report observes that increasing levels of interest in offshore-outsourcing of legal services to India have been aided by a steady growth in demand for legal services.

"The legal services outsourcing segment in India is still at a nascent stage, with no known large `one-stop' service provider. "

Currently, the market comprises a fair mix of captive centers established by large law multinational corporations as well as third-party providers," it says.

Hindustan Times says:

Legal outsourcing to India seems to be fast catching up in the US, with large number of attorneys in Grand Forks increasingly relying on lawyers, sitting thousands of miles away, in cities like Bangalore, Delhi and Chennai, drafting legal briefs and doing research for cases to be fought in American courts.

Given the advantage the Indian lawyers have, experts in Grand Forks believe it is unlikely that other Asian or African countries would compete in this sector as has been in case of call centres.

"There is no difference between Indian and American advocates. The quality of work is the same," said Attorney-at-Law, Jay Ethington, specialising in criminal defence.

A former Assistant United States Attorney, Ethington said he had tried Indian advocates to do research and complete the paper work for about half-a-dozen cases. "Results have been very good all the time," he told HindustanTimes.com.

Indian advocates do not fight the case directly in US courts. Sitting thousands of miles away, they do the research work, analyse the case and draft the legal brief for advocates, who fight the case in US courts. This saves lot of time and energy, besides money, for American attorneys.

Now a strong advocate of legal outsourcing, because the advantages India have, Ethington said: "I am very much impressed by the work done by Indian lawyers to help fight cases in US courts." Initially, like other US advocates, he too was reluctant in hiring Indian lawyers to do research work for his court cases.

Highly impressed by the quality of work executed by Indian lawyers, Larry Newman, who specialises in corporate transaction, said: "They have been instrumental in getting favourable results even in complex cases." Author of Texas Corporation Law, Newman said he favoured legal outsourcing to India because of cost efficiency, fast response and good quality of work done by the advocates. This is the reason, why it is fast catching up, he argued.

One of the greatest advantage, he said, was the time difference between India and the US. "While our legal research associate are busy preparing the case, our rivals - US lawyers, sleep. As such our company works 24 hours," Dhir said.

A CNN article comments:

A number of U.S. companies, including members of the Fortune 500 and some of the country's largest law firms, are now embracing the idea of outsourcing routine legal work to India, South Korea, Australia and other locales with far lower labor costs.

General Electric, the country's fifth-largest corporation, has taken the idea the farthest of any company and set up a subsidiary in India that employs about 30 lawyers.

This year 12,000 legal jobs moved offshore -- less than one percent of the total -- according to Forrester Research, a Cambridge, Mass.-based market research firm.

http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage.php?storyflag=y&autono=189243


It didn't take much for University of Pennsylvania law school friends David Perla and Sanjay Kamlani to become entrepreneurs. After working as corporate counsels for years in the US, they wanted to make an impact on the legal market.

Last May, they set up legal services firm -- Pangea 3 -- with five US lawyers and two clients. Today, they have a dozen clients, and 15 professionals. And in the next three years, they hope to have about 200 lawyers and 100 clients.

Their clients -- US law firms and legal departments of corporates -- may be American and British, but they are serviced from Mumbai, thousands of miles away.

Or take Evalueserve, the BPO which has hired three lawyers and plans to hire seven more immediately. “Fortunately, the area is still nascent,” says Alok Agarwal, chairman, Evalueserve.


$5 bn is what US firms alone will outsource in litigation support by 2006

$17 bn is what the KPO revenue (of which LPO is a part) will grow to by 2010

$300 mn is the revenue para-legal services will generate by 2010

A Case for Legal Process Outsourcing

Shyster at http://shyster.blogspot.com/2005/09/busting-legal-monopoly-outsourcing.html presents a great case for Legal Process Outsourcing. The author is a US Attorney himself and like a majority in the US Attorney community, is waking up to a world where outsourcing of legal services is not longer mission impossible.

India, being a favored destination for knowledge based outsourcing, is home to a number of providers of legal services. These providers are located all over the country and provide services that span a wide spectrum of legal services. Their success is an indicator of a successful trial run of not only outsourcing but also offshoring legal work.

This blog will track the players in this space, the services they provide, and their well being. In addition, this blog will host pointers to interesting activities within the legal world with a greater focus on intellectual property.

To begin with, as pointed in the article by Shyster, we take a look at Pangea3. The firm is based out of Mumbai (India's commercial capital), is run by US Attorneys, and employs Indian lawyers and technologists. Being uniquely located in Mumbai, Pangea3 has the advantage of being able to provide a whole gamut of legal related services, within the broader scope of Patent Prosecution and Litigation, Contract Review and Drafting, Legal Research, Document Review and so on.

Being led by US Attorneys is the USP of the firm. Pangea3 uniquely offers the combination of lawyers and technologists for lawyers and technologists, two groups who form a majority of the firm's clients - effectively aYour team in India concept.

Legal Process Outsourcing is slated for a huge success, news reports and analysis on this blog will prove that. Watch this space!