Saturday, October 6, 2012

LPO: Serving the Clients Needs


The practice of law is changing at an exponential pace and clients no longer accept automatic increases in billing rates and escalating costs without questioning. To retain existing clients and gain new ones, firms need to offer unique cost saving alternatives. One such alternative is to have best in quality, more routine legal work performed by fully licensed Indian lawyers charging few dollars per hour, in contrast to the hundreds of dollars typically charged by law firms for their associates and paralegals. Because the Indian lawyers are working in a time zone almost 12 hours away, USA’s “down time” is India’s “up time” and the work essentially continues around the clock. As a result, clients often get real results the next working day. The most commonly offered services have been document review, legal research and writing, legal transcription, drafting of pleadings and briefs and patent services.


Legal outsourcing allows both a law firm and a corporate in- house legal department to have their respective staffs focus on the core value work for which intimate knowledge of the client, its business, and the nuances of the legal specialty are required. Outsourcing not only better serves the needs of the client, but it also makes the practice of law more interesting. The legal process outsourcing in India has been growing at a faster pace and with higher growth rate and has been in a great progression during these many years. According to one of the latest surveys, at present, there are more than 15,000 professionals employed in various LPOs across India.

The growth rate of the LPO industry in India is quite faster in comparison to the other countries. Now, everyone at the management level is looking to invest significantly in the systems, security and process to ensure the most important aspect of running this business which is - Data Security and Confidentiality. Providing business confidentiality is the key consideration of any outsourcing firm’s security measures to build a strong and trustworthy relationship with the clients. The LPOs which had started with 4-10 professionals a year back have now grown to a large strength of 400. LPO industry is also passing through the same phase as like the BPOs which had multiplied significantly in  the recent past. The future of LPO can be visualized with the glance on the following facts:
  • Jobs in the field are likely to increase to 79,000 by 2015. (Source Forrester incorporation).
  • “LPO service providers in India likely to generate revenue of US dollar 960 million 2015-2016 (Source Evalueserve).”
  • “A USA based technology and Market Research Company indicates the current value of legal outsourcing is $80m (£40m) [about 3% of the estimated market] (Source Forrester incorporation).”
  • “A US based technology and Market Research Company indicates the current value of legal outsourcing is $60 m more than (£30 m) in India alone (Source Forrester incorporation).”
In light of Draft n Craft’s history of managing legal data for law firms and corporations, we are very sensitive to the issues of data security and client confidentiality, regardless of the actual content of that data. Draft n Craft treats client data with careful regard for the client’s confidentiality needs and concerns. The company has implemented comprehensive security measures to ensure that client data is not accessed by unauthorized personnel, and that data which is accessed is only utilized to the extent permitted by the scope of our undertaking with the client. Contact Us

Monday, October 1, 2012

Do you really know what’s hurting your practice


If you’re among the 100’s of law practices who want to outsource in order to control their legal expenses but are not able to figure-out what to outsource, here’s a tip that might be of help to you.

This is exactly where law firms need to work upon if they want to use outsourcing to the best of their advantage. Some tips that can help you identify what can be outsourced are:         

  •  Differentiate between core and non-core activities.    
  • Try and find out the processes which are less productive, monotonous in nature.
  • Evaluate the opportunity cost of your time spent on each process.
  • Evaluate the number of man hours spent on each process.
  • Set the objectives that you need to achieve from outsourcing.
  • Consult with vendor for any suggestions from his side.
  • Select the process which you need to outsource.
I’m sure you’ll agree that any firm considering outsourcing is actually willing to accept and implement change in its procedures, service delivery or any other functional area to be able to survive in this competitive environment. 

The process of change starts from identifying what is the function that actually needs to be changed followed by the rest. No matter how well the objective or the end result of the change is being defined but unless you know what is it that you need to work upon, pitfalls are inevitable.

At last, I just want to say it’s high time that the firms start considering re-structuring or innovative ways to steer themselves out of the hardship that they are into at present.