LPO – The new name in outsourcing
LPO, or Legal Process Outsourcing, is a relatively new name. After BPO and KPO, LPO seems to be another flourishing industry in the making. Several high-profile law firms in the US are outsourcing their legal processes to offshore providers. They, however, are still charging the same fees to their clients as they did before, hence making a good profit in the process. Clients are not far behind either. Several intelligent clients have seen through this money making and have started outsourcing their legal processes to offshore agencies on their own. They are getting the high volumes of low-priority legal work done by offshore providers, while assigning the more important issues to local, experienced lawyers.
LPO-s in India are among the first and foremost service providers being targeted by the larger corporate clients, and with good reason. Law professionals from India are often hailed as some of the best in India. They are known to have a keen understanding of world politics and are also known to be well-versed about the laws of many countries. Moreover, the difference in the value of dollar and Indian rupee makes dealing with India-based Legal Process Outsourcing firms all the more profitable for US-based corporations. Some of the larger US-based corporations have even made long-term contracts with some of the leading LPO-s in India, getting their clients’ cases handled with the help of these firms. This is not only helping them in cutting costs, but they also manage to charge lower fees from their clients. Consequently, they get many more clients than before, thereby multiplying their incomes multifold. Lastly, in these times where economic recession has pushed everyone’s panic button, this sort of move is absolutely logical anyway. This has resulted in major Indian players in the BPO market, such as, Wipro, Infosys, etc. have switched to legal process outsourcing, setting an example that smaller LPO firms can emulate. According to predictions from finance gurus, this trend should become more prevalent in the coming years, starting with 2009.
The switch is not without its share of drawbacks, though. In order to make sure that their clients receive superior service, the corporate organizations have to optimize and organize their legal services, just the way they organize other shared business processes. One way they can achieve this is to employ some attorneys in every jurisdiction where they operate, and keep the bulk of the work to be handled by Indian legal service providers in order to save up on capital. The resources from India will cost at least 50%-80% less than that in other countries anyway, bringing down the total capital to be invested anyway.
Some of the leading companies in the US, such as DuPont, Oracle, and GE have already transferred the bulk of their legal processes to India, in a planned manner to make sure that their clients continue to receive cost-effective, yet high-quality services. The legal process outsourcing firms in India are rising at a rapid rate, and in the coming years, starting from 2009, their popularity is expected to rise even further.
