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