legal process outsourcing (LPO)
The Indian legal process outsourcing (LPO) industry will more than triple in size and employ 17,000 professionals within five years, predicted research and analytics firm Evalueserve in a study. Around 15 per cent of outsourced services is so-called high-end work that is normally handled by US and UK associates.
Legal process outsourcing (LPO) company Pangea3 has acquired 12,000 square feet of floorspace with a 165-seat capacity on a mezzanine above its existing office in Andheri earlier this month.
Mysore-based legal process outsourcing (LPO) company SDD Global has successfully helped defend an $800,000 California Court of Appeal libel claim against Sacha Baron Cohen, the creator of comedy characters Ali G and Borat.
Telecoms major BT has entered into an agreement to outsource part of its global in-house legal work to legal process outsourcing (LPO) provider UnitedLex, beginning with a team of 15 lawyers based mostly in India.
Legal process outsourcing (LPO) companies are giving stiff competition to law firms in the talent hunting stakes, writes the Eco Times today.
The article quotes several people working at LPOs, who claim that compared to law firms the companies offer:
- better growth opportunities,
- decent working hours and less work pressure, and
- good salaries.
In the article I briefly argue that LPOs still have an image problem and remain second choice for the top law graduates, despite the recent inroads LPOs have made.
Do you agree/disagree?
Would you ever work for an LPO or is it still not a popular choice for most 'real' lawyers / 'dignified clerks'?
Or do you work at an LPO and can tell the story how it really is?
Legal process outsourcing (LPO) newcome Overlegen has opened an office in the US, after hiring a new vice president for business development North America in Austin, Texas.
Legal process outsourcing (LPO) provider CPA Global has hired Rio Tinto's managing attorney Leah Cooper as a board member, following Cooper striking a deal last year to outsource $20m of the mining giant's annual legal work to CPA in India.
A final-year NUJS Kolkata student has set up and is running a legal process outsourcing (LPO) firm of seven lawyers.
Khaitan & Partners managing partner Niloy Pyne is launching a legal process outsourcing (LPO) company of up to 35 lawyers in Kolkata in joint venture with a large US health insurance and BPO provider.
Things usually start out nice and steady and the managing partner wears the star rainmaker cap and every other hat on top of it.
But with greater size come greater responsibilities.
It is therefore not a huge surprise that Amarchand Mumbai has taken on a chief operating officer (COO) to relieve the Shroff family of some of its internal management duties.
That Amarchand has hired a non-Indian COO from the UK is more unusual.
Allen & Overy (A&O) has agreed to outsource its legal work to Mumbai and New York with legal process outsourcing (LPO) company Integreon, becoming the first magic circle firm to embrace the LPO model, according to The Lawyer magazine.
Kochhar & Co's founding partner was recently the first practising lawyer to be awarded 'young entrepreneur of the year' at the Rajiv Gandhi Awards.
We have quizzed the lawyer and businessman on his passion for enterprise and what it takes to be an entrepreneurial lawyer - apart from following your dreams.
A new university course offering a qualification in legal process outsourcing (LPO) has been launched in a barrage of acronyms.
The course is a joint venture between Indian legal training providers/recruiters Rainmaker and the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) School of Law.
The Rs.18,000 one-year on-line taught course is snappily entitled P.G.D.L.P.O. (or Post-Graduate Diploma in Legal Process Outsourcing, to give it its full name).
According to a press release published on LPO blog Legally Yours, the syllabus will cover: "Professional English Proficiency (“PEP”), Virtual Intelligence Methods (“VIM”), Legal Education and Proficiency (“LEAP”), Skills, Personal Effectiveness and Enterprise Development (“SPEED”)".
Catchy! (even though VIM's long-form is slightly confusing).
Apparently, according to the press release, 500 students have applied already for the first semester and the University is going to roll out a second intake in August to meet demand.
This programme could very well catch on and it could also be something that LPO providers facing high staff attrition have been clamouring for.
The main question will be whether law graduates will really be up for spending another year studying and losing themselves in an acronym jungle.
Photo by vlima.com
London paper the Evening Standard has run a scare story on legal jobs going to India today, which makes a welcome change on the paper's usual stories on transport chaos and terrorism.
FoxMandal Little's (FML) outsourcing arm in particular, will supposedly be single-handedly responsible for taking away 1,000 UK lawyers' jobs by the end of the year, according to a quick extrapolation done by the Evening Standard on the back of a napkin.
As far as Legally India understands it, FML's outsourcing venture Legal Circle is still one of the smaller operations in the market but that should not put a halt to ambition.
Legal Circle's outsourcing head Soumitro Chatterjee told the Evening Standard that he had met 10 UK firms and added: "All of them are thinking of creating between 50 to 100 seats [jobs]."
Is the paper counting FML's chickens before they've hatched, perhaps? No, 10 times 100 equals 1,000. That'll make a headline.
Most Evening Standard readers are not excited by the prospect, however remote.
"Outsourcing work to India is not good," writes Jan Need from Romford in the on-line comments. "It would probably be a lot easier to do [the work] in London in the first place. The main reason for all this is obvious. £6,000 for a lawyer in Mumbai £70,000+ for a London lawyer. Need I say more?"
Photo by vlima.com
KSB Partners' legal process outsourcing (LPO) arm Lexplosion is set to more than double its capacity of lawyers within three months, as it aims to roll out a new compliance management product for Indian companies.
Law and Justice Minister Veerappa Moily wants India to "become the resource reservoir of the global legal fraternity" after upgrading the quality of its legal education system.
Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto has outsourced part of its legal work to 12 qualified Delhi lawyers, which has already saved the company $1m (Rs 5 crore) in little more than a month.
Above the Law talked to Gururaj Potnis, the director of Manthan Legal, which claims "over 700 man-years of experience in the LPO industry".
Potnis said that US firms would have to wake up to LPO if they want to survive and offer value to clients. "Some law firms are just wanting to be blind," he told Above the Law. "There is a tremendous value potential. But people do not want to take an open view."
The business case he makes is sound on many fronts: clients will increasingly request low-level legal work to be outsourced, LPO can solve headaches for management such as underutilisation and high fixed costs, as well as keep the legal work-flow ticking over 24/7 – although one imagines many US white shoe firm associates already work almost as many hours in the week, or at least did, before the downturn.
In typically ironic, vociferous and often offensive fashion (you have been warned), Above the Law readers commented on the story in droves – currently the thread runs to 123 comments and counting.
They include the good ("Again, outsourcing is not a magic solution to every problem. But properly used, it can be a very useful tool."); the bad ("These Indian lawyers are helping to BURST THE BIGLAW BUBBLE!"); and the ugly (from a "parody of a xenophobic hick").
See today's story on Legally India about the Scottish, who see the future of Indian outsourcing in Scotland.