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