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.