Legal Process Outsourcing finds big future in India

US-based research firm finds legal process outsourcing can bring $4 billion and 79,000 jobs in India in ten years and boost Knowledge Process Outsourcing
Sanjiv Kumar
New Delhi: Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) is set to be the next big thing in the outsourcing sector after Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) which is reaching its limits and Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) expanding its wings to capture 70 per cent of the world's market,

Legal outsourcing to drive KPO business

There has been much predicted for the Legal Outsourcing/ Offshoring business taking off. Good news. As we have seen and realize, this will not be an easy task and the companies which will eventually succeed will need to negotiate a comples minefield of challenges including dealing with
- Quality (quality, quaity and quality)
- A fragmented market
- A relatively closed market formed and sustained mainly on relationships
- An actual change in the work process

BANGALORE, DEC 25: After BPO, India is also set to become the hub for knowledge process outsourcing (KPO). With KPO growth projected to touch the $10-billion mark by 2010, legal process outsourcing (LPO) its key driver is leading the way by showing high growth potential.
As associate lawyers in the US carry a price tag ranging from $225 to $450 per hour, India is a natural fit and already five of the 20-odd Indian KPO companies have established themselves and are tapping on skilled legal professionals to handle the outsourced work.

Cochin - Not really an obvious center for KPO growth?

We think it is! Hence the existence LegalEase India Pvt - Cochin. Hidustan Time's article - After the BPO revolution, now is the time for KPOs - quotes
"Chennai and Bangalore have a strong advantage of being the main KPO centres in the country. Both cities are near education hubs. They have large number of graduates with specialized analytical skills, superior English, and IT acumen. They also have a natural flair for mathematics, science and research."
Well we have just started making Cochin a global leader in KPO. We look forward to growing our Cochin office and making our staff amongst the best in the country.

Reasons to outsource!

There are many reasons to outsource and among those listed in an article in The Orange County Register by Knight Ridder (No, no pun intended, that is his real name) I have highlighted ones I think are the most relevant to what we do.
"When to outsource:
A company cannot outsource every task. Here are some guidelines a company can use for deciding which work can be contracted to an outside firm.
The work is not your company's core competency; you don't want to spend energy on a task that is not basic to your company's existence.
You have a deadline and cannot do the work in-house on time.
Your company doesn't have enough money or resources to do the work in-house.
The extra work is temporary.
You want to save money or free up in-house resources.
You cannot find the right employee to hire to do certain work.
You don't have time or resources to train employees to do the work.
You want to establish long-term, strategic relationships with world-class service providers to gain competitive advantage.
Outsourcing the work spreads your risk.
You want to tap special expertise in a specific area.
Outsourcing can reduce spending on technology that will quickly be out of date.
An outside provider can do the work better than you can, and for less money

8 out of 13. Not too bad. We make the most of the generic list to outsouce too!

What legal business will be worth $1 billion by 2015?

Ooooh, big money for inexpensive, fantastic work. That's the future of legal services delivered by offshore companies in India, which is expected to generate $1 billion in revenue by 2015, writes Joy London.
In today's post, London provides readers with an excellent guided tour of a 68-page report by ValueNotes. London describes a number of nuggets from the report, Offshoring Legal Services to India. Here's a taster:
"... although law firm IT directors say they are sending precious little work overseas, it appears that some substantive and administrative legal functions (e.g., document drafting, legal research, document discovery, paralegal and other administrative and secretarial support services) are being outsourced to India. Otherwise, why have we seen such a proliferation of India-based legal outsourcers ..." More

A Smaller Legal World

LegalEase Solutions needs to get the word out that we are an active player in the market. The 'market' is getting more aware of the benefits and it is important we position ourselves to play competitively when it gets going on its feet.

Emily KoppTuesday, December 13, 2005
Texas lawyer Michael Gorton says he's "fairly opposed" to sending work overseas. For patriotic reasons, he believes work should be done close to home, with talent bred in the United States. Whenever practical, he says, he favors doing business with friends.
But when it comes to running Dallas-based TelaDoc, the telemedicine company of which he's CEO, Gorton says he's happy to outsource legal help to India.
Gorton's first foray into the world of international outsourcing happened about a year and a half ago. Gorton says he hired his primary law firm (which he wishes to keep anonymous) to conduct research on legal issues in half a dozen states. The firm's fee came to nearly $250,000.
So Gorton approached an outsourcing company he had read about in Texas Lawyer, a sister publication of the Daily Report. Atlas Legal Research promised its Indian lawyers could complete the same work at a fraction of the cost.

Hourly Billing Rates Continue to Rise

The below article appeared in Law.com. Makes one think that with the hourly rate increasing how much more inclined will clients be to avail of high quality, affordable work?
Legal Offshoring/Outsourcing will provide an avenue to get some of these costs down.

Upward trend still in evidence at law firms, with some notable figures at the high end of the scaleLindsay FortadoThe National Law Journal12-12-2005
It's a good time to be a lawyer.
Billing rates for law firm attorneys jumped last year, with partners and associates raking in more dollars per hour than ever before. And at least one partner now charges $1,000, the first four-figure hourly rate reported to The National Law Journal. This year, 116 law firms responded to questions about billing rates included as part of the NLJ's 2005 survey of the nation's 250 largest law firms. (The survey is sent to about 300 firms, therefore some firms included in this survey are not among the NLJ 250.) Of those 116 responding firms, 102 also supplied answers to those questions in the 2004 survey. The 2005 results indicate that most firms raised their rates for both partners and associates at both the high and low ends of their ranges. Seventy-nine of the 102 firms that responded in both 2004 and 2005 raised their highest rates for partner this year, while 10 reduced theirs and 13 kept them the same. Seventy-six firms raised their lowest rates for partners, while 10 decreased them and 16 kept them the same.

Complex Jobs Moving Offshore [ Outsourcing ]

— Ron @ 1:26 pm
Offshoring “is moving up the food chain” reports Kevin G. Hall of Knight Ridder Newspapers in More complex jobs moving offshore.
Tax, public relations, architecture, and high-end research are all examples of functions where companies are seeking help in India and elsewhere offshore according to the article. Robert Reich, President Clinton’s labor secretary, is quoted: “Any professional service that can be boiled down to predictable steps, even if they are complicated steps, is now exportable to South Asia.”
Law firms - and clients - should take note that cost is not the only reason to send work overseas. The article reports on a survey by the American Institute of Architects. It found that among architecture firms that sent work offshore, “a quarter cited lower costs, another quarter cited faster production and 50 percent… said offshoring helped them cover peak demand, allowing round-the-clock work on projects.”
The article also discusses the legal market, quoting me about the recent AmLaw survey that found 6% of AmLaw 200 firms have sent work offshore and citing Mindcrest for the document drafting and legal research services it provides.
Reich’s predictable but complex steps may well describe large scale discovery document review. Let’s hope that firms deploying 10s or 100s of contract lawyers have routinized the review process through documentation and quality control. If not, they have an inherent problem. If so, can anyone say software and/or India?

Tiny Michigan firms offer outsourcing
Following lead of big companies, outsourcers link local businesses to cheap overseas labor.
Louis Aguilar / The Detroit News
December 6, 2005

The next wave of outsourcing to hit Michigan isn't coming from General Motors Corp. or Whirlpool Corp., but from tiny firms that are far from household names.
They are run by people like Raphael Juarez, who works out of his den in Ann Arbor, Praveen Suthrum, a freshly minted MBA from the University of Michigan, and Dave Galbenski, who is hiring in India, Sri Lanka and Royal Oak.
They represent a new breed of niche outsourcers who help small and midsize companies in Michigan gain access to cheap labor as far away as India and China. It's a new business model for a new time, and it may just be a lifeline for Michigan companies trying to survive in the global age.
US/China Manufacturing Inc., the firm set up by Juarez and a partner in Shanghai, links businesses in China to smaller U.S. auto suppliers, including struggling mom-and-pop shops in Michigan.
Your family doctor may already be a customer of Suthrum's NextServices Inc. The Ann Arbor firm takes medical billings from doctors, sends them to India for processing, and zips them to the proper insurance company within 24 hours.
Galbenski said his company, Royal Oak-based Contract Counsel, is leveling the playing field for small law firms and their clients by offering an affordable way to outsource legal research that can be too expensive to perform in-house. Galbenski sends the work to researchers in India, and soon Sri Lanka.
"I don't like the word outsourcing. I like micro multinationals," Galbenski said. "Because that's what I think entrepreneurs like me are doing, we are creating global businesses on small scales."
An entirely new venture
Such businesses did not exist before 2002 in Michigan or anywhere else.
"Five years ago, if you didn't have $10 million to establish offshore capabilities, you couldn't participate," said Robert Kennedy, associate director of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan business school, who studies global business trends.
"You are describing businesses that are the cutting edge, most of them formed within the past three years. There will be many more of these kinds of businesses," Kennedy said.
"They reflect how ingrained outsourcing has become and how rapidly it's evolving."
Michigan will be lucky to nab as many as these businesses as it can, Kennedy and other analysts contend.
While they may cause the loss of some low-wage jobs here, they will also protect jobs by allowing companies to keep costs in line.
In addition, they will create high-tech and managerial jobs here in Michigan.
Taking a cue from giant firms
Kennedy says small outsourcers are pouncing on the global market recently created by the likes of Ford Motor Co. and Dow Chemical Co. And now that countries such as China, Poland and India have heavily invested in their infrastructure, creating reliable Internet connections and cheap phone lines, and dropped trade barriers, smaller competitors can enter.
"Individual entrepreneurs have figured out they can be global competitors now," Kennedy said. "Many of them are the men and women who created the offshoring opportunities for the huge corporations. A lot of them are now saying " to themselves, 'Why should I do this for them, when I can do this on my own?' he said.
That's how US/China Manufacturing Inc. was born last year. Juarez and his partner in Shanghai are former Ford Motor Co. employees who helped the automaker set up relationships with Chinese manufacturers.
Juarez said he was part of the purchasing team that went to China and negotiated the first deal where a Chinese-made part, an audio speaker, was installed in a U.S.-built vehicle.
"Our Ford experience was so invaluable" Juarez said. "It showed us the way to compete in a global, sophisticated way. I work out of my home, but really at this point it doesn't matter. Because we can guide our clients through the maze of China to save these U.S. firms money. It's our knowledge and connections that make us players," he said.
"Beyond the experience, what you really need is a reliable connection to the Web and e-mail, and we have that. Everyone has that now," Juarez said.
US/China Manufacturing can cut an auto supplier's cost by as much as 40 percent. It's also providing a way for these firms to survive, Juarez contends.
"It's not an option for these U.S. firms to ignore outsourcing. It's either do or die and we are trying to show these American firms a way to stay alive," Juarez said.
Juarez, like the leaders of the other firms, said he couldn't name specific clients due to confidentiality agreements.
Finding unique niche counts
Suthrum and Gabelinski are going after businesses not typically associated with outsourcing such as physicians and law firms.
Suthrum's NextServices has clients as small as one doctor and is pursuing groups of physicians as large as 20.
"We can save the physicians up to 50 percent in administrative costs, which gets passed on to the patient. I think everyone wants to cut health care costs," said Satish Malnik, chief executive officer of NextServices.
Galbenski's says he's adding depth to small law firms by linking them with legal workers in India and soon, Sri Lanka.
"We are basically giving (the law firms) more power and influence that they previously could not afford," he said. "We can research in the middle of a trial. We can get them that information for the next day in court."
Preparing to grow
Both NextServices and Contract Counsel have added full-time staff to their Michigan headquarters as they gear up their overseas connections and will likely add more local staff. And so it pains both companies when they get criticized for stealing jobs from Americans.
"You can't deny this revolution going on," Suthrum said in a recent phone interview from Mumbai, India
"It's the first time in history any person in any part of the world is able to access the same information at the same time.
"Michigan is a very beneficial place to do business. There is tremendous talent and international experience. I only want to contribute to the economy," Suthrum said.
"The view of whether this trend is good or bad, that simply depends on the filter or perspective you are coming from," he said. "I understand it can be very scary. But what is even scarier is that Michigan gets left behind as this amazing, exciting new way of doing business is being created."

LegalEase Solutions Strengthens Appellate Practice

LegalEase Solutions is proud to announce that we have now strengthened our full-service appellate practice support services. With the hiring of Rubina Mustafa, we have greater capacity and capability to draft civil and criminal appellate briefs, both in federal and state court.

Rubina Mustafa is a veteran appellate attorney, with stellar legal credentials. Rubina S. Mustafa graduated from the Detroit College of Law at the top of her class in 1994. Ms. Mustafa currently works as a guardian at litem with the Michigan Children’s Law Center and has her own practice on Grosse Ile providing legal services to businesses, nonprofits, and individuals.

Ms. Mustafa’s legal experience includes working as an Employment Law Associate at Dykema Gossett, a judicial clerkship at the Michigan Court of Appeals, and for 7½ years, Ms. Mustafa was a staff attorney with the State Appellate Defender Office, representing over 300 indigent criminal defendants on appeal of their conviction and sentence.

Ms. Mustafa currently serves as a Treasurer on the state executive board of the Woman Lawyers’ Association of Michigan and as President of the Association’s Wayne Region, as Chair of the Grosse Ile Community Recreation Commission, and as an At-Large member on the state board of the ACLU of Michigan.

She currently lives in Grosse Ile with her husband, Rodger Martin Will, Jr., and her children, Arshia and Savio Will.
We are very excited to have her head up our practice group.

By outsourcing appellate work, clients will pay less than ½ of what it would cost to have the work done by an appellate attorney. For more information on our appellate practice, as well as other services, such as patent and document review, legal research and discovery, feel free to contact us by telephone or e-mail.

The Billable Hour: Are Its Days Numbered?

Almost everyone agrees that the billable hour is the scourge of the legal profession. So why is it still around?
Douglas McCollamThe American LawyerNovember 28, 2005 For about 50 years now the billable hour has been the dominant feature of the legal profession. And for just as long lawyers have been trying to kill it. A group of litigators who usually couldn't agree that the sky was blue without several footnotes qualifying the shade will gladly sing in harmony about the evils of the billable hour and its partner in crime, the daily time sheet. Yet generations of lawyers have accounted for their work lives in six-minute increments. Both reviled and ubiquitous, the billable hour is the cockroach of the legal world. The basic flaw of the billable hour, say its detractors, is that it puts the financial incentives for lawyers in the wrong place. Back in a more genteel age, grouse many lawyers, when the practice was more of a profession and less of a business, the cost of legal services was determined not by the amount of time a lawyer spent on a matter but on the value he delivered to the client. That model broke down and was replaced by a time-based metric -- which, say critics, encourages firms to overstaff matters, lard their bills with marginally useful services, and draw out cases that might be brought to a swifter conclusion. "Their pricing model follows the production costs instead of following the needs of the buyer," says David Perla, a former in-house lawyer with Monster.com and co-founder of Pangea3, a new company that offers legal services performed by lawyers and scientists based in India at a steep discount to domestic rates. Perla calls the time-based American legal profession "grossly inefficient" and ripe for the competition that companies like his can provide. Offshoring is only one development posing a threat to the long hegemony of the billable hour. Technology in general has allowed firms to automate certain services for which they used to rack up billable hours. At the same time, as associate costs have soared, so have firm billable hour rates, climbing almost 30 percent during the last five years. That has prodded corporate clients, led by the likes of E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. and General Electric Co., to be more aggressive in exploring alternative pricing models for legal services, forcing even longtime outside counsel to bid for the right to represent the company. Fifteen years ago elite firms like Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom could get away with padding charges for photocopies and danish. Today sharp-eyed corporate accountants aren't afraid to put bills from even esteemed outside firms under an electron microscope. Such aggressive auditing, and a growing recognition of the defects inherent in the billable hour-based system, have led many inside the profession and outside to ask some simple but profound questions. What is it exactly that lawyers are selling to clients? Is it their time or their skill? And, if it is their skill, isn't there a better way to measure that value than by watching a clock? No one has put more effort into trying to drive a stake through the heart of the billable hour than Robert Hirshon, chief executive officer of the Portland, Ore., firm of Tonkon Torp. As president-elect of the American Bar Association in 2001, Hirshon traveled the country taking the collective pulse of the profession. The principal source of dissatisfaction, he says, was the billable hour. Associates complained that outlandish billable hour requirements were ruining their personal and professional lives. Partners resented that the almighty billable had become the single most important measure of their worth to the firm. And general counsel thought the billable hour caused firms to focus more on how much time they could put into a matter rather than to focus on the result obtained for the client. "All these complaints seemed to intersect at the billable hour," Hirshon says. So Hirshon put together a special commission to examine the impact of the billable hour on the legal profession. The commission surveyed hundreds of law firms and in-house legal departments, quizzing them about their billing practices and reliance on billable hours. The resulting report, issued in late 2002, ran more than 60 pages and fingered the billable hour system for a host of perceived ills in the profession, including bill padding, associate defections and the dearth of pro bono work. The report recommended a host of alternative billing strategies that firms could adopt to replace or augment the billable hour.
Law.com

E-Discovery: Pre-Litigation Considerations for In-House Counsel

LegalEase Solutions LLC: Another way legal outsourcing can be a viable provider to conduct timely due diligence and pre-emptive discovery for corporations on a regular basis.
Article
Every week, it seems, there is another article (or another court decision) highlighting the pitfalls of electronic discovery for companies in litigation. This article touches on some key considerations for in-house counsel even before litigation lands at your door and you are in the thick of discovery.
Consider all of the electronically stored information throughout your company -- including far-flung offices, servers that may be maintained by third parties offsite, and even computer files of contract employees. Consider the volume of electronic information that is created -- and destroyed -- each day. E-mails and more e-mails; Word documents in multiple versions; PowerPoint presentations; Excel spreadsheets. Multiple copies of every one of these. Now imagine being told by your litigation counsel -- or by the judge -- that you must locate, review and produce all of that electronically stored information for purposes of a pending lawsuit. And that you must take steps to ensure that no potentially relevant data is destroyed -- that you must stop all business deletion of electronically destroyed information, even the most routine practices, such as rewriting of backup tapes and the deletion of e-mails by individual employees.
Law.com - Legal Technology

Drafting patents, the new BPO

During 1997-2001, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) granted almost half a million patents and over 700 organisations were granted more than 100 patents each during these five years.
Overall, more than 3,53,000 utility, plant and reissue applications were filed in 2004 alone and out of these, foreign applicants filed more than 1,59,000.
Evalueserve estimates that as many as 5,00,000 patent applications will be filed with the USPTO in 2010
Within the US, the task of preparing, filing and prosecuting patent applications as well as that of performing other intellectual property work (preparing, filing and prosecuting trademark applications and copyrights, intellectual property or IP litigation and IP asset management) is being performed by approximately 30,000 attorneys and agents who are registered with the USPTO.
In order to meet the rising demand for the additional IP work, Evalueserve predicts that this number will exceed 38,000 by 2010; otherwise, the corresponding prices will rise very sharply.
Currently, many large organisations have in-house IP divisions that usually consist of agents, associates, lawyers and business development professionals who handle pretty much all kind of IP work.
However, most small and medium-sized enterprises do not have such divisions, and even many large firms often outsource some -- or all -- of their IP work to external, US-based law-firms.
Rediff.com

Legal Outsourcing to India will Dramatically Increase

Los Angeles, CA 90017

November 11 2005

Outsourced services and manufacturing to India is not new. For the year ended March 2005, India earned $6.7 billion in U.S.-based outsourcing services, such as software and technology call centers. Legal services are next. NASSCOM (the National Association of Software and Service Companies - an Indian industry organization) recently estimated that the amount of U.S.-based legal outsourced work is currently worth about $60 to $80 million annually, but this will soon increase to $3 to $4 billion. The research firm, Forrester, provided similarly dramatic estimates. Forester estimates that legal outsourcing to India is currently less than 12,000 jobs, but is estimated to grow to 29,000 jobs in 2008, 35,000 jobs by 2010, and 79,000 jobs by 2015. Two-thirds to three-quarters of these outsourced legal jobs are likely to go to India. More importantly, the sophistication of work going to India is increasing. Until now, the bulk of legal services work consisted of paralegal, secretarial, and litigation support. However, the Indian firms are now offering more valuable services such as: Contract review and monitoring Document review for due diligence Patent drafting Simple filings Legal research Rates for outsourced legal jobs vary widely depending on the nature of the services provided, but range from $12 to $125 per hour. Generally, the rates for Indian legal workers are about 10% to 20% of their U.S. counterparts. Indian outsourcing offers the following economic advantages: A significant wage differential – Indian firms report paying legal researchers around $12,000 per year. There are also savings in perks, overhead, and working conditions since Indian lawyers do not have the prestige that attorneys have in the U.S. Time zone differences, which allow overnight turnaround and 24x7 operations These advantages are not without challenges, but none of these challenges are insurmountable. The most important challenges to Indian legal outsourcing include concerns about data security, conflict of interest rules, and the need for Indian lawyers to also pass U.S. bar examinations. Interestingly, the need for Indian-based lawyers is being addressed through American law schools and U.S. immigration policies. Some Indian-based legal talent is schooled in the U.S., but American education visas allow these students to stay in the U.S. for only a short time after graduation. The newly-minted Indian lawyers return to their homeland, where the best jobs are working for Indian legal outsourcers. The supply of cheap Indian labor is not likely to end soon. English is the language of business in India. India has 200 million English-speaking college-educated workers, most still in their 20’s. More than 200,000 Indians graduate law school each year, five times more than in the U.S. As with most emerging service industries, there are no identified industry leaders. The participants include: About a dozen operators that have no other service lines beside law - These include Pangea3, Atlas Legal Research, Intellevate, India Legal, ALMT Synergies, Lexadigm, and Lawwave. About 50 broader-based outsourcers that have a legal group - These include Evalueserve, Integreon, Office Tiger, and Manthan Services. In-house law departments of some multinational firms - Reported examples include DuPont, General Electric, United Technologies, Bayer, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle and Sun. The impact on the legal job market is obvious. However, like most changes, other consequences are not so obvious. Here are some of the changes that might occur as outsourcing becomes more widespread: If the cost of litigation is reduced, this could encourage U.S. firms to become more litigious. Small firms, when backed by outside affordable resources, might become more competitive and able to take on larger cases. Fulcrum Financial Inquiry is a financial consulting firm that serves the legal community with damages analysis, forensic accounting, and appraisal capabilities
Trish Bongiovanni (dnolte@fulcruminquiry.com)Office ManagerFulcrum Financial Inquiry LLP1000 Wilshire Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90017 Phone : 213.787.4111 Fax : 213.787.4141
NewsReleaseWire.com

India: Becoming global counsel

80,000 legal jobs will shift from the US to India by 2015. A number that can make you sit up and take notice — of LPO that is. The case for legal process outsourcing – read LPO - is fairly straightforward. Reduction in costs and streamlining of operations by major global corporations, like any other stream of offshoring, are the obvious drivers. What’s exciting about LPO, till now a small component of the overall BPO industry, is the future potential, especially vis-à-vis India. “We expect dramatic and exponential growth, based both on the cost pressures currently faced by the US and UK legal markets, and the traction that we are seeing across all of our service lines,” says Sanjay Kamlani, co-CEO of legal offshoring outfit Pangea3. Dittos Jason Brennan, director-legal services, OfficeTiger which offers legal offshore services in partnership with Hilderbrandt International: “The future of the LPO market is promising. In the US alone, estimated current spending for support services totalled $19.92 billion in 2004. Assuming a very conservative outsourcing potential of 10%, the resulting opportunity is about $2 billion. Of this, I believe India can capture a substantial share.” A survey of corporate law departments conducted by the American Corporate Counsel Association suggests that 86% of respondents cited external legal costs as their top concern. This has been the contributing factor in beginning an aggressive search for alternative sourcing methods. “The trend towards outsourcing - well under way in the IT services and finance sectors - is thus beginning to make its presence felt in the legal industry as well,” points out an industry analyst. Outsourcing helps the in-house counsel focus on core legal issues while research and managerial aspects are taken care of at lower costs.
The Economic Times

Outsourcing shouldn't bother US anymore

Silicon Valley, November 2: Contrary to common perception, Information Technology outsourcing benefits the US economy by increasing the number of US jobs, improving real wages for American workers, and pushing the US economy to perform at a higher level, according to a new study.


"Global sourcing continues to be a net positive for American workers and the US economy," said Harris N Miller, President of information technology association of America (ITAA), the leading trade association for the it industry.
"By driving down the costs associated with computer software and services and by opening more overseas markets to US competition, global sourcing sharpens our country's competitive edge at home and abroad. The result is more American jobs, higher wages and a faster growing economy overall."
The study, conducted by global insight, found that worldwide sourcing of IT services and software generated an additional 257,042 net new US jobs in 2005, a number that is expected to rise to 337,625 by 2010. With low inflation and high productivity, global sourcing also increased real hourly wages in the US by $0.06 in 2005.
Press Trust of IndiaPosted online: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 at 1401 hours ISTUpdated: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 at 1516 hours IST

79,000 legal outsourcing jobs for India by 2015

Houston, November 12: India has huge potential in legal outsourcing, with the number of jobs in the field increasing to 79,000 by 2015, a study by an American research firm has said.


Though India had earned over $6.7 billion in US-based outsourcing services such as software and call centres till march 2005, the field of legal outsourcing was largely untapped, the study conducted by Forrester said.
The study estimated that jobs in the field which was poised to increase dramatically from about $80 million annually to approximately $4 billion, would grow to 29,000 in 2008, 35,000 by 2010, and 79,000 by 2015.
At present the number of jobs in legal outsourcing in India stood less than 12,000, it said.

Press Trust of IndiaPosted online: Saturday, November 12, 2005 at 1139 hours ISTUpdated: Saturday, November 12, 2005 at 1536 hours IST

Indian BPOs fight US court battles

NEW DELHI, NOV 6: US court battles are now being outsourced to India. In a fiercely- competitive market where cut-throat deals have slashed voice BPO rates to $5-6 per hour, a segment of the industry is making a niche for itself in the name of legal BPO. An estimated 35,000 US lawyer jobs will move to low-cost destinations like India by 2010. The number will reach 79,000 by 2015.
Just 700 people, 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 genera ted by EXLServices, one of the largest BPOs in India employing 5000 people.
Major third-party players in legal outsourcing in India include Evalueserve, Pangea3, Lawwave, Manthan, Lexadigm, Atlas, Integreon and Office Tiger. In-house (captive) legal outsourcing by MNCs like GE, Oracle, Sun and Cisco has also been very successful. Subsidiaries of large US law firms in India like Intellevate (Noida) and IPPRO (Bangalore) are also successful.
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.
HARSIMRAN SINGH
The Financial Express

LegalEase: A new name, breed in out-sourcing

Out-source. In southeast Michigan, the phrase itself has become, in some households, as offensive as swearing at the dinner table. But Canton residents Tariq Akbar and Tariq Hafeez are working to change the image of the word, as they themselves open up doors to the next big thing in out-sourcing: The legal profession.
Akbar and Hafeez, partners in the firm they've named LegalEase Solutions, have been for the last year providing off-shore legal support services to attorneys in 11 different states.
"Out-sourcing has been in the United States for more than 20 years, and recently it's become like a bad word," Akbar said. "But there's a new breed of out-sourcing and it's tapping the intellectual capital of the world."
He added that most people associate out-sourcing with job loss - an American factory worker loses his job because his employer opens up shop overseas and replaces him with a low-wage worker. But Akbar said in this case, out-sourcing is really about job creation in a global economy. The duo has employed five attorneys in the United States, as well as eight attorneys in India.
The services provided by LegalEase attorneys are typical of those that a new lawyer, right out of law school, would provide, according to Akbar. They perform support functions such as legal research and writing, preparation of pleadings, patent services, and document review, and they do it at a reduced cost because attorney fees in India are much lower than in the United States.
"That's what legal out-sourcing is all about," Akbar said. "We are viable because we can get some of the grunt work done very affordably."
It was Hafeez, an attorney who had been employed for the State Attorney General's office, who first came up with the idea to out-source legal work. However, because he was born and raised in Michigan, he had no contacts in India. But Akbar, who is related to him by marriage, did.
Akbar, who was at the time employed as a business consultant by Deloitte and Touche, moved to the United States just six years ago, and his family has strong connections in the legal profession back in India.
"I thought of him right away and we began talking about it," Hafeez said.
It was a leap of faith leaving their full-time jobs to devote all their time to the new company. Akbar, whose first child is due to be born any day now, and Hafeez, a father of two small children, said because they are the breadwinners in their families, it was definitely unnerving to leave their former jobs. They found a few investors who believe in the idea.
"But I believe this will sustain us, and it will happen very soon," Hafeez said.
The business was one of only five in the world just a year ago, according to Akbar, but now is one of 14. And it's growing rapidly.
"We grew 100 percent last month," he said.
Even though both partners began full-time work for LegalEase just this June, they believe that by December the company will begin turning a profit.
No matter how much Akbar and Hafeez believe in the fledgling company, they still had to look at how they would be perceived, due to the negative connotations of out-sourcing. But their concerns were calmed a bit when they hired a salesman to increase their client base, and he put it this way: "Are you serious? We're talking about lawyers here. I don't think anyone is really upset about lawyers losing their jobs."
The bottom line is, according to Akbar, there are some 1 million attorneys in the United States, and last year they earned about $7 billion.
"That's just a lot of money," he said. "People have to think really hard before they see a lawyer because it's so expensive. And I know that one of our clients right here in Michigan does pass along his savings to his clients. I do think that companies like ours will provide a benefit to the common man."
For more information about LegalEase Solutions, call (734) 238-1584, or visit online at www.legaleasesolutions.com.

cmarshall@oe.homecomm.net - (734) 459-2700

The Canton Observer

Training in technical language must for KPO services

MUMBAI: Move over BPO, knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) is the latest buzzword these days. 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. Written communication skills have thus become an integral part of daily work, as well as a necessary ingredient to working in geographically-dispersed teams. In the legal arena, for instance, almost half the work in US litigation is written advocacy, says Abhay ‘Rocky’ Dhir, president of Atlas Legal Research, a US-based legal process outsourcing (LPO) firm with offices in Chennai and Bangalore. “And often, what we write will appear verbatim in front of a US judge. In KPO, knowledge is not something you verbalise. Everything is being passed in a written format,” he adds. Same is the case for firms like Thomson West, a global publishing house with a pilot office in India that prepares summaries of unpublished US court decisions. In high-end medical services, offshoring areas of growth include diagnostic services, telemedicine, telepathology and testing services like genetic profiling, oncology tests, HIV and allergy tests. “Training is believed to a key enabler of process accuracy, for which new employees are typically trained for a period of nine months in areas such as listening skills, medical language and other basic transcription skills,” notes a PwC study on the KPO industry. E-learning and healthcare knowledge management are currently untapped avenues, which will focus more on writing skills. 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.
CANDICE ZACHARIAHS & ARNAV PANDYA
The Economic Times

AMERICAN TRENDS: Outsourcing to India extends to legal services

By current estimates, the United States has about 1 million lawyers.
They have been plenty busy.
The research group of the National Association of Software and Service Companies found that in 2003, the bill for legal services in the United States totaled more than $166 billion.
But a posting on the Fast Company Weblog recently pondered whether American lawyers might be losing their footing.
The reason is a continuing outsourcing of legal services, especially to India.
Legal-transcription services have been outsourced to India for years. Because of the time differential, documents can be received in India, typed and resent to the United States before the courts reopen and the first cup of coffee is poured.
Now, the outsourcing of legal services has risen far above typing services, because, as many have recognized -- it doesn't take an American lawyer to practice American law.
With India graduating nearly 300,000 lawyers annually, the number of attorneys is rising quickly.
Yet it is not the number of lawyers in India that's so appealing to an increasing number of companies and even law firms looking to cut legal costs.
It's the savings.
A $200-an-hour attorney in the United States is about a $40-an-hour attorney in India.
(The disadvantage: Not too easy to hop a plane to New Delhi when you want to talk to your lawyer face-to-face over lunch.)
GARY ROBERTSON
POINT OF VIEW
Richmond Times Dispatch

P.s. - With LegalEase Solutions LLC you CAN have lunch with your lawyer while outsourcing your work!

BPO catches up with law firms

Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) is passe. Opportunities are now knocking for those ’lawful brains’ in the country’s fast-growing BPO sector. This time around, the buzzword is legal outsourcing (LO). A survey of corporate law departments conducted by the American Corporate Counsel Association suggested that a majority (to an extent of 86%) cited legal costs as their top concern. Does it mean an opportunity for the legal players?.
In the present IPR regime, pressure is increasing to comprehend the structure demanding specialisations in intellectual property rights (IPRs). So where lies the opportunity? In terms of drafting contracts, online research, reviewing and reporting documents, litigation support, IP researching, drafting and applying for patents.
On all these services, the cost-arbitrage is the attractive factor for the outsourcing companies. For example, to draft a patent by an US firm, an attorney charges about $250-$600 per hour in the US whereas in India, it is $50-$60! But, it is still a matter of concern for clients in terms of perfection, says a leading attorney from Andhra Pradesh. It is understood that although there is a huge potential existing for LO for patent-related services right from proof-reading to patent translation, the present manpower and strengths among the legal community are both short-staffed as well less-experienced.
According to a study done by Snapdata Research, the US legal market revenue during the year 2003 was close to $197 billion. Research by Hilderbrandt International estimates that the worldwide spending on legal outsourcing might touch $6.5 billion by next year.
With over 850,000 law professionals conversant with the legal system in the US and UK, India is the ideal destination. GE, Citigroup, DuPont, Oracle and Cisco have certain law firms which are already outsourcing legal services to India.
“The outsourcing of patent drafting and technical research and analysis to India is growing and as a company providing these services,” says Sanjay Kamlani, co-founder of Pangea3 which is providing patent clients in the US with end-to-end patent services. “Patent-related outsourcing falls in the domain of both engineering and law. In fact, in the US, the filing, prosecution and enforcement of patents are more legal practices than engineering,” he points out. Agrees Ramesh B Vishwanath, a member of the patent technology cell of CII,”There are several companies working on their own or support their organisations overseas. ,” he says.
Looking at the statistics, during May 2004, close to 607 patent agents and attorneys got registered with the Patent Office. Registration is also a critical point as it needs a special process with the current system being stringent with the nature of application. The Patent Office has started conducting examinations twice in a year focusing on how to draft a patent and and how to converse with a client. Hopefully, this might pave way to tap the next line of opportunities in offshore-onshore legal activities

BV MAHALAKSHMI
Posted online: Monday, October 24, 2005 at 0113 hours IST
The Financial Express

India to be "key player" in KPO

After the success story of business process outsourcing (BPO), India will emerge as a "key player" in the knowledge process offshoring space considering its large base of talented professionals, according to global consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
"India will be a key player on KPO supply side, as it is a country with a large base of highly qualified professionals," PwC Executive Director Joydeep Datta Gupta said unveiling the report 'Global Integration through KPO'.
"Ageing workforce in the western world and the consequent shortage of professional skills in the future will be the key drivers for the inclusion of Indian talent," he said.
The report also lists India's evolution as an offshore knowledge-hub by analysing the 15 key industry verticals namely software product development, Pharma R&D, legal services, writing and content development.
As per the PwC projection, a law firm in India could be offering services to their counterparts in US in the days to come, a Pharma research team offering very specialised services to global markets and a mathematical tutor in India providing tuition to American children over the Internet.
For each specific sector, the report highlights the features of KPO that distinguish it from a BPO.
KPO is not an extension of BPO as the premise of a KPO is to include into a global delivery team, the requisite skills that support an organisation's core processes, PwC said.
While KPO is driven by the depth of knowledge, experience and judgment; BPOs in contrast are more about size, volume and efficiency, the report said.
Press Trust of IndiaNew Delhi, October 19, 2005
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1523744,00020021.htm

India rides outsourcing boom to capture legal work

Sunday, 16 October , 2005, 10:06
New Delhi: India's growing pool of lawyers are being tapped to provide paralegal services for customers from the United States as the next frontier in the country's booming outsourcing sector, executives say.
Companies in India are offering trained lawyers using legal databases such as Westlaw and Lexis/Nexis to provide law firms in the United States with low-cost research, writing and analysis in a move to capture a market worth billions of dollars.
"We did a survey of corporate houses in the US in which 86 per cent identified the high cost of legal services as their number one cost worry," said Sanjay Kamlani, co-founder of the legal outsourcing firm Pangea3 LLC.
"Add to that there are one million lawyers in India and 70,000 graduating from law schools every year. We realised that we had an enormous business opportunity," he said.
The National Association of Software and Service Companies, an Indian lobby group, said in July that outsourcing firms had barely scratched the potential of the estimated $250 billion legal services market. It estimates Indian firms now get $60 to $80 million worth of outsourced legal business annually.
http://sify.com/news/othernews/fullstory.php?id=13964596

Legal Services Enter Outsourcing Domain - Excerpts

It happened with tech support, financial services and catalog order-taking. Now, a growing number of U.S. and British companies outsourcing legal work to India
The practice started a few years ago with simple word processing and filing services performed by non-lawyers. But increasingly, squads of experienced but inexpensive lawyers based in India are doing things ranging from patent applications to divorce papers to legal research for Western clients............
“If you have large volumes of documentation or a repetitive activity that can be easily emailed or scanned, it can be outsourced,” says Mathew Banks, a British attorney who is the chief executive officer of ALMT Synergies, a new legal outsourcing firm in Mumbai. “Anything is possible.”

And lowering costs lets companies spread their limited legal budgets more broadly. “It gives me more time to do other things,” says Rishi Varma, general counsel for Trico Marine Services, a Houston-based offshore drilling support company...........

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.

While American law firms routinely use domestic contract lawyers to save money, most have been slow to send work to India. 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. He expressed reservations about whether Indian lawyers are ready to handle the complex, high-end work in which his firm specializes. “Firms like ours that work on complicated and significant cases don’t expect the main part of that work effort to be done [offshore] at the same level we do it,” he says........

By ERIC BELLMAN and NATHAN KOI’PEL
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 28, 2005

From Inside Counsel to Offshore Counsel?

Cost-cutters who appreciated CFO magazine's October article "Lawyers for Less" might also take note of a related but largely unnoticed trend. In 2003, about 6,000 legal-service jobs were shipped offshore, according to a report by Forrester Research. This year that number should reach 20,000 according to Forrester, which predicts that offshore legal jobs will climb to 39,000 by the year 2010.
For years, many law firms outsourced word processing to India, says Sumeet Nath, vice president of operations at Lawwave.com, a unit of Openwave Computing LLC, which has offices in New York and Chennai. Sending litigation and contract-support work abroad was simply the next step, Nath explains. Perhaps a year ago, corporate legal departments discovered that they, too, could save money and take advantage of the overnight hours by offshoring legal tasks.

Marie Leone, CFO.com
October 07, 2005
http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/5010177?f=home_featured

More GCs Put Outside Litigators on a Budget

Elisa Garcia realizes that no amount of two-for-one coupons or meat lovers' specials will ever turn her law department at Domino's Pizza Inc. into a money-making operation. Instead, the best that she can hope to do as general counsel is to control costs. So, in an effort to gain some of that control, she requires the litigation firms that the pizza company hires to set budgets for the costs of cases at the outset. Garcia's move is part of a trend among corporate counsel who continually cite cutting costs as their greatest concern and who see detailed budgets from outside counsel as a way to trim their expenses. But looking into the future is difficult, say some outside counsel, who assert that devising a realistic budget that can also accommodate the unexpected is a tricky -- if not confining -- endeavor.
Leigh JonesThe National Law JournalSeptember 27, 2005
http://www.law.com/jsp/ihc/PubArticleIHC.jsp?id=1127738115384

Law firms send case work overseas to boost efficiency

Law firms are outsourcing some of the work on their cases to other countries, joining a growing national trend of trying to cut costs by using a labor force paid at a lower rate than American workers. "Clients are entitled to get these things done in an efficient way," said Jim Shea, managing partner of Venable LLP, one of the Washington area's biggest law firms. His firm has used Indian companies to draft patent applications for Venable clients. The foreign companies also have done "coding" of legal documents in which they index and annotate them before transferring them to computer software. The Indian firms can do legal work for about $40 an hour, compared with $120 an hour charged by many U.S. law firms. Mr. Shea said the quality of work does not suffer from using foreign workers because it is reviewed by U.S. lawyers. "We apply the legal experience and expertise we're required to apply," he said. Other Washington law firms that occasionally outsource legal work include Arnold & Porter LLP and Howrey LLP. Although most of Howrey's outsourcing is done in the United States, some of its contractors have partnerships with companies overseas. The work is limited to coding and electronic data processing, said Brian Conlon, Howrey's chief information officer. About 695,000 lawyers and 200,000 paralegals were employed in the United States in 2002, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. About 1,300 Indian workers provide services for U.S. lawyers, generating about $52 million in revenue, according to Evalueserve, a business and legal research firm with more than 800 employees in India. By 2015, their billings to U.S. firms would increase to $970 million at the current growth rate.
By Tom RamstackTHE WASHINGTON TIMESSeptember 26, 2005
http://washingtontimes.com/business/20050925-102112-4588r.htm

Legal Research Outsourcing Set to Boom

India is not the only market for legal outsourcing, but it certainly has a headstart: Indian law graduates are already performing high-end legal research for overseas clients, and publicizing it aggressively. As such we can expect India to be the recipient of a good share of the work, yet again.

An adventurous investor may wish to take advantage of the wealth of talent in developing nations to establish a handhold in less-explored industries like medical and legal research and transcription. Highly specialized professions are easily promising markets.

http://www.offshoring-digest.com/outsourcing/255.html

Should Small Firms Get on Board With Outsourcing?

Below are some excerpts from a new article in the Small Firm Business Magazine regarding legal outsourcing (my comments are below):

Some attorneys swear by it: offshoring legal work to India. But is this growing practice just a passing fancy, or is it an effective way for law firms to take a step towards gaining a competitive advantage?

For Ted Sabety the answer is pretty clear. "Law firms need to get on the [outsourcing] train," he says, or they'll get left in the dust. He feels that the ability of firms to pass along savings from the reduced costs for more junior-level legal work is an important competitive advantage. And who knows if another business trend will come along to provide firms with a similar cost saving opportunity for their clients?

The principal of an eponymous three-attorney technology and electronic-media law firm in New York City, Sabety outsources some of his firm's first-year associate research tasks to lawyers in Hyderabad, India. His is a business model that's about striking a balance. He and his colleagues provide the services that attract the clients -- performing analysis, constructing arguments, handling negotiations, etc. At the same time, junior-level legal work is sent overseas to English-speaking, common-law trained lawyers.

"If I hired someone full-time to do the work here, it would require substantial pay, overhead and training," he says. What's more, Sabety says that he gets a quality of work that's equal to that of junior associates here in the United States, yet at a bargain price. Even accounting for the time required to double-check the final work product of the Indian lawyers, he says the savings are significant

The article discusses certain criteria that an attorey should keep in mind before choosing a legal outsourcing provider. Among them are:

1. Ties to the United States: This is absolutely essential, as our experience in running an outsourcing company has showed us time and again. The work cultures of the United States and India are different, and choosing a US company is vital to meet client expectations. In addition, the three most vital elements of a successful outsourcing company are: training, training, training. A US based company is certainly better suited to provide the appropriate training to its attorneys

2. Requring high level of training: To reiterate what was stated above--training is absolutely essential to the success of a legal outsourcing company. Here at LegalEase Solutions, we train our attorneys with both training materials from U.S. law schools as well as pilot projects replicating actual client issues and projects. The training is continuous, with much of it concentrated in the beginning, and regular training every month. LegalEase trainers are all U.S. licensed attorneys with significant experience under their belts. There can be no compromise in training--LegalEase surely doesn't allow for any.

3. Supervision of attorneys: As anyone with offshoring experience will tell you, competent supervision of employees in India is crucial. While many outsourcing companies will undoubtedly start with using independent contractors in India (for its cost savings), as a company matures, it will need to have greater control over the time of its Indian attorneys. For a US lawyer shopping for outsourcing companies, definitely go with one with full-time employees.

4. Closely review work: This advice has dual applications--just as the end user of the legal products must always review the work, so should the outsourcing company. This review serves as an essential substantive review early on, while the Indian attorneys are getting familiar with doing US legal work. Later, as the Indian attorneys are fully competent, the review serves as a quality control process.

Very few outsourcing companies make a commitment to have all work done in India reviewed by US licensed lawyers. LegalEase is one of the few companies which promises to have all work reviewed by its in-house US licensed attorneys.

The next post will deal with the (1) appropriate projects to give to outsourcing companies, (2) security and confidentiality (3) legal ethics.

Tariq Hafeez, Esq.
Partner
LegalEase Solutions LLC

Probono Legal Outsourcing?

In the wake of the catastrophic events of Hurricane Katrina, we are witnessing the generosity and goodwill of fellow Americans, from random acts of kindness to organized relief efforts. I n the midst of food donations, delivery of clothes, fundraisers, and the like,a new type of service is being offered to a particular segment of Katrina's victims--Lawyers.

The New York Times on September 9, 2005 ran an article on the destruction of the legal system in Lousisana entitled "A System in Shambles" which can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/ This article vividly described the unbelievable destruction of Lousisana's legal system. The article estimated that 1 in 3 attorneys in Lousisana have lost their offices. Just imagine, one-third of the legal community in Louisiana is without access to its files, computers, research materials, etc.

The service being offered to Lousisana attorneys is free legal research and writing--by legal outsourcing companies. In a way, its a type of probono service provided by legal support services to attorneys adveresely affected by the hurricane. By taking advantage of this free service, Lousiana attorneys can help others by offering probono services of their own and also cope with and complete paying work, to keep bread on their tables.

The initative to offer free legal research and writing services was started by Jurix Prudent, a new kid on the block in legal outsourcing. LegalEase Solutions is already working on a probono project with a displaced Lousisana attorney, and has offered free services to Lousisana attorneys on various websites including the state bar association website for Lousiana.

So next time you think about outsourcing as affecting America, please remember that legal outsourcing in more than one way is positively affecting both the legal community and the community at large.

India on the threshold of a boom in legal BPO, says Nasscom report

In an article published on September 12, siliconindia.com refers to a Nasscom report that foresees significant growth in the Indian outsourcing market for legal services. This trend may emerge because legal firms, legal departments in large business organizations, and legal publishing and research houses based in the US are increasingly turning towards India to source services.

Although the legal outsourcing market in India is negligible at the moment, the few services providers that have made the start have managed to provide good service, and this can benefit new entrants who will have the confidence of their clients. In the near future, the legal BPO market in India can multiply rapidly and emerge as a strong segment in the overall BPO services in India. According to an estimate, the potential for legal outsourcing from the US alone is $3-4 billion. siliconindia.com quotes the latest Nasscom report on Legal BPO:

Though there is little hard data available to quantify the legal off shoring segment of the Indian BPO industry, it is estimated that only about 2-3 percent ($60-80 million) of the potential market has been tapped so far.
http://www.blogsource.org/2005/09/india_on_the_th.html

India's courts in session - overseas

Encouraged by the successful growth of the IT outsourcing industry, India has turned its attention to another field to conquer: Legal BPO.

Attention from law firms, multi-national corporations’ legal departments, and even the legal research and publishing firms, legal outsourcing might just be the next big thing. Though still in its infancy with only 2% - 3% gained of the potential market, legal BPO looks very promising with figures for outsourceable legal services hitting 9 figures with US$3 – 4 billion at stake.

"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,” reads a NASSCOM report. It optimistically furthers, "The legal services segment is a relatively newer segment that has witnessed recent interest and is believed to hold significant market potential.”

For the moment, legal services outsourced to India are of the para-legal and secretarial support nature. Further services are being eyed for export, such as contract review, patent writing, litigation support, and general research and review. An estimated US$ 250 billion is anticipated in revenues generated by offshoring of legal services – 2/3 of these coming from US clients.

Indian firms who have heeded the call early, providing offshored legal services include in-house legal departments of multinational corporations that have migrated to their India branches: General Electric, Oracle, Sun and Cisco. Offshore-centric service providers such as those devoted to legal services have been contributing the legal BPO growth as well, as Pangea3, Atlas Legal Research, Lexadigm, and Lawwave have been doing. Service providers with legal or patent support services have also come into play, with the likes of Evalueserve, Office Tiger, and Manthan Services in the offing.

"It is reported that there are about a dozen pure-play firms offering offshore legal services from India, and the total number of companies offering some form of offshore/outsourced legal services is about 50," says NASSCOM. Head count for India’s fledgling legal BPO industry stands at 600 – 700 employees, with rates playing around the $12 - $125 rate, dependent upon the nature of service rendered.
Monday September 12, 2005 at 9:20AM - Offshore Outsourcing World Staff
http://www.enterblog.com/

They Rule the World

One-year LLM programs at U.S. law schools are on the rise again, attracting fledgling power brokers from around the world
Mikheil Saakashvili left the former Soviet Republic of Georgia in the early 1990s to get a degree at Columbia Law School -- then returned to lead a democratic revolt. In late 2003 Saakashvili rallied his countrymen against corruption in the so-called Rose Revolution, elbowing out former president Eduard Shevardnadze. Today Georgian cabinet meetings have the feel of an Ivy League seminar, with the foreign minister and deputy justice minister also trained in American law. Such is the power of the LLM, the one-year advanced degree that allows foreign lawyers to attend U.S. law schools. These degrees are rarely regarded as revolutionary -- and yet they promote political change. "LLMs are undoubtedly the most effective rule-of-law programs," says Bryant Garth, the incoming dean at Los Angeles' Southwestern University School of Law and the longtime director of the American Bar Foundation. "You create friends. You create people who understand U.S. models. You build an army of advocates for reform."
Michael D. Goldhaber The American Lawyer 09-14-2005
American Lawyer Article

Legal work outsourcing potential waiting to be tapped

RIGHT from filing patents to drafting transnational contracts to creating necessary information back-up for global corporations in litigations and providing support in contract management - - ,one can outsource a wide range of legal work, bringing in similar scale of economies that business process outsourcing brings to companies.

Indian companies have come of age offering legal outsourcing and making a difference. They are eyeing the $200 billion US market. Significantly, while there are different projections as to what is in store for the Indian market place, one estimate by Forrester puts this at about $3.9 billion by 2010.

Interestingly, this is not just about attorneys, law grads or practising professionals of law at the bar alone. A host of other professions such as engineers and technology experts would be part of this trend, bringing in different domains and pooling resources to provide the end product and service.

The co-founder, Chairman of Pangea3, a legal outsourcing services provider based in the US with operations in India, Mr Sanjay Kamlani, said, "a patent-related services can be offered from outsourced centres at a fraction of the cost needed to process it there.. That means for the same amount, a US company can file for more patents."

Speaking to Business Line, Mr Kamlani, a co-founder of OfficeTiger and its general council and Chief Financial Officer then, said that Pangea3 has been seed funded by Mr Sunil Wadhwani, a co-founder of iGate and Mr Avinash Bajaj, former CEO of eBay India.

"There is lack of clarity in what constitutes legal services in the outsourced mode. This has created different assessment of the current market size and the future potential India holds in the international marketplace, given its advantages.

If you analyse the market size from a different perspective, it clearly emerges that the market is now about $1.5 billion and is projected to grow to about $3.9 billion to $4 billion by the year 2010.

This is something which research firm Forrester also predicts.

V. Rishi Kumar
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com

Legal outsourcing is the next big thing: Nasscom

NEW DELHI: With the international law firms, the legal departments of MNCs, and legal publishing and research firms, particularly based in the U.S., increasingly looking at sourcing services from India, Legal BPO may well be the next big opportunity for Indian firms. Indian firms, till now, have cornered only 2-3 percent of the potential market says a Nasscom report. "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.
Estimates of the current addressable market potential for legal services outsource able from the U.S. alone are pegged at $3-4 billion. Though there is little hard data available to quantify the legal off shoring segment of the Indian BPO industry, it is estimated that only about 2-3 percent ($60-80 million) of the potential market has been tapped so far," says the latest Nasscom report on Legal BPO.
http://www.siliconindia.com/shownewsdata.asp?newsno=29397

India to grab 35K US law jobs by 2010

NEW DELHI: High-end legal services are likely to lead the next wave of offshoring with about 35,000 lawyers' jobs likely to move from US to countries like India by 2010. In its latest study, prepared in July, Nasscom says that MNCs, international law firms, publishing and legal research firms are now increasingly sourcing specialised legal services from India. This is a substantial shift from the existing outsourcing assignments such as credit cards and online technical support. Forrester Inc has found that at least 12,000 legal jobs have been outsourced from US to offshore locations till 2004. The firm projected that of the 35,000 US lawyer jobs expected to be shipped out, 60 to 70% could be headed India's way. By 2015, the total number of outsourced jobs from the US could touch 79,000. ''Reports indicate that billing by Indian lawyers to US firms for in-house work alone ranged from $5 million to $15 million in 2004," says Sunil Mehta, V-P, Nasscom. He says, about 700 employees are estimated to be engaged in providing legal BPO services from India. The global spending on legal services is estimated to be at least $250 billion and Nasscom says that the future looks brighter. ''For a country which churns out close to three lakh law graduates every year, and job market still largely supply-driven, this certainly is good news," says Amit Bhagat, legal consultant, Ernst & Young. ....
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1217363.cms
NAVNEET ANAND
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 02, 2005 12:50:53 AM]

Playing on a new court

The Indian IT industry has a new court to play on — Legal BPO. But as global firms outsource work to India, domestic players will have to address concerns of data security and service quality to score in the game.
THE Indian IT industry has a new court to play on - Legal BPO.
With international law firms, the in-house legal departments of MNCs, and legal publishing and research firms, particularly in the US, increasingly looking at sourcing services from India, Legal BPO may well be the next big opportunity for Indian firms.
Indian firms, till now, have cornered only 2-3 per cent of the potential market, says a Nasscom report.
"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 ......
Moumita Bakshi Chatterjee
The Hindu Business Line

Legal Trends

The legal community has been undergoing changes in many fronts. Technology, new business drivers, outsourcing, new markets all have had a huge effect on the way lawyers and law firms are targeting clients.
Lets discuss!