Niyamath Parveez

There are some industries where people have a lack of respect for the people working in authority but would be very lost without them. The most obvious one is the police and law enforcement agencies that provide safety and security but a comparison can be made to lawyers and solicitors. Whenever people are in potential trouble and need representation, there is a huge need for solicitors to provide the advice and assistance and perhaps even representation in order for justice to be best served.

Sometimes it is not even about earning a not guilty verdict for the person who has been charged with the crime. Justice is a wide term and ensuring that they receive the right punishment for the crime they committed is as much as what solicitors do. Of course, the fact that they make huge profits and charge such a large price for their actions is what annoys a great number of people. However, if you listen to the lawyers and solicitors, it is not as simple or as straightforward as this.

They are quick to inform people that they too have been affected by the economic recession that is blighting the world at the moment. Everyone is suffering and it makes sense that even lawyers would be struggling to keep their income greater than the costs. If they are unable to increase their income then the solution must resolve around lowering their costs. This is sometimes done by making any administration staff redundant but a firm needs to have administration in place in order to be able to do their job. With so many different cases to take care of and so many court visits to remember, a law firm requires good administrative skills to perform well and provide their clients with a quality service.

This has been made possible by the rise in outsourcing firms who are offering a provision of law back room services. The great thing about these firms is that they are usually ran and employed by staff who have a great deal of experience in working in the law industry which means that the work is being carried out by skilled staff. This is a tremendous boon and ensures that the law firm will have peace of mind about the work that is being carried out. Saving money is obviously very important but if the quality of the work being carried out is extremely poor then there would be no benefit in carrying this outsourcing task.

Recent weeks have seen three reasonably well known law firms state their intention to turn towards the world of law firm outsourcing. Hammonds, Travers Smith and Halliwells have all intimated that they intend to look into the possibilities of outsourcing. There is even the chance that this work may be outsourced all the way to India as the benefits of offshore outsourcing are able to provide an even greater benefit to law firms. There will obviously be displeasure at the UK losing jobs but that is not the concern for the firm at hand.

The internet has quite clearly made the world seem like a smaller place. Connecting people with so many new communication channels and possibilities has made it easier for firms to interact with other companies and customers but that is hardly the tip of the iceberg. Many of the firms operating in developed countries will consider their cost of labor to be higher than what could be had in many developing countries around the world but working out how to channel and utilize this staff force is difficult. It can be an extremely bad PR move for any firm as it invariably involves placing some local based staff out of employment whilst hiring people from another country that is able to provide labor at a much cheaper rate. This is what is known as offshore outsourcing and has been a staple part of many firms’ international tactics in recent years. However, offshore outsourcing has generally seen jobs and departments move wholesale to a new country, perhaps with new offices being set up specifically for these jobs.

It is obvious to see why major firms with huge work forces will gain a benefit from this but smaller firms are unable to benefit from this. However, the internet has opened up the possibilities to employ a single person or very small team of staff, wherever a firm can find them. This means that no matter where in the world a potential employee is situated, they can be utilized to allow a firm to reduce their labor costs and save money.

There are web sites like the elance site which allows companies to advertise jobs they require to be filled and allow potential employees to tender for these jobs. This site, and many others, has dramatically changed the way that employers go about finding workers and fulfilling their work orders. The beauty of elance is that it is extremely simple for all parties to use the site and this is very useful for encouraging communication and shared workloads. A company will upload details of their job and interested parties can tender for the product, indicating the price they take for completing the job and the deadline with which they will complete the job in. It is possible for the tendering party to supply further information about their experience and credentials for fulfilling the job and there are additional tests than the tendering parties can undertake to offer some guarantee about their working experience. This provides a degree of confidence to the firms who are advertising the jobs and all customers will receive feedback, which also gives some form of indication about the quality of the work of a supplier. Once a winning bid has been accepted, the two parties can start sharing information about the job and it is possible for all parties to communicate directly through whatever mechanisms they choose, which can help speed up the process of outsourcing. If a firm has only infrequent jobs that they need completed in a short time, using an outsourcing site like elance is a fantastic way of working.

To many normal workers and employees in the major countries, outsourcing is an extremely bad word and one that only brings pain and misery. To the bosses it can be seen as a good thing because of the benefits it brings with respect to labor costs and maintaining quality but to the average Joe, well it is just a bad thing. Even President Obama was quick to say that outsourcing is bad and if you look around the rising unemployment, you would be forgiven for thinking that it is an evil that must be stopped before it goes too far and ruins Western civilization. As with all things in life, the hype and the hyperbole has probably overtaken the actual real life situation and now is maybe a good time for people to take a step back and re-evaluate outsourcing and determine if there can be any benefit for them with it.

It may shock you to realize you that outsourcing is one of the fastest growing industries in America and is providing a solution to many firms and employees all across America. The benefits of fast and reliable network connections and the ability to share workloads online has made it much easier to be located one place but work elsewhere and this is allowing the outsource benefits to happen internally in a country too. The main gripe about the outsourcing jobs that have went to India or Malaysia has been with people moaning about the fact that the jobs have only went there because they managed to undercut on price. It is fair to say that these emerging economies have been able to grab an advantage by having a lower wage structure than the West but there are other benefits to working with them too.

For many people, outsourcing still has to offer a quality of service or it will never be of benefit, regardless of how cheap the wage is. If the finished product or service is of a low quality, no end user is going to want to sign up or buy the product and the company will be left with a gaping deficit where sales used to be. This means that maintaining a good level of outsourcing is necessary and this is turning many people back towards the home market in order to find the right supplier.

More and more people are able to provide a service from home or from a location with a much lower cost which is allowing cost savings to be made. As financial savings are a major component of an outsourcing contract, this is giving US based citizens or small firms a fighting chance of winning a big contract which may mean that outsourcing is the answer to all of their problems.

It is very easy to demonize outsourcing as the big bad threat to local businesses and jobs but by looking at the possibilities that open up when outsourcing takes place, people may just find the answer to their own financial problems are within their grasp.

The most natural jobs provided by outsourcing firms would be based around the call center industry but there are a whole range of jobs that can be adapted to work within the remit of outsourcing. Whether it is a service industry or a production based industry, there are possible and plausible ways to ensure that the jobs is undertaken and completed to everyone’s satisfaction. Given the current concerns over finances and economics, it is not surprising that employers and firms in industries which were probably considered safe are now looking at ways they can move their work force overseas. Offshore outsourcing is becoming an attractive proposition for so many industries and the latest shock moves could affect the lawyers based in London. When it comes to outsourcing, the general public usually has a degree of sympathy with those people who have lost their jobs but lawyers are a breed apart and they may not garner the same level of support as many other employees would.

An announcement from one of the biggest law firms in India, FoxMandal Little, has put London solicitors on red alert and anxiously waiting news about their own future. The Indian firm has received a number of jobs and offshore postings from the UK in the past year and they believe that the amount of work that they will receive in the next year will be double the current figures. A lot of this belief stems from the fact that representatives of the firm have held meetings with around 100 City firms in London, each of them looking to replace around 100 workers with work being undertaken in Mumbai and Delhi. The basic math of this situation would see 1,000 jobs in the City being taken away from UK workers and moving to India.

It is believed that as many as up to 3,000 workers in India, currently employed as administrative staff or corporate lawyers will soon end up on the payroll of London based firms. This will be of great benefit to the London firms through the reduced labor costs they will have but obviously they are confident there will be no noticeable dip in quality. Given that law and the legal world is such a competitive industry, there is no suggestion that a firm would be able to survive if the quality of their services dipped by too much. Competitors would be able to step in and offer a greater service to clients and take customers away. Therefore, there is an obvious level of satisfaction with the law services being provided by Indian law staff, which only bodes well for Delhi and Mumbai’s progress in the future.

The current figures for outsourced law jobs in India stands at around 10,000 people so there is a sizable amount of lawyers already working on outsourced jobs in the nation but there appears to be much more to come. Many people keep expecting the Indian outsourcing bubble to burst but with statements like this, it can only be likely that India will remain at the top of the outsourcing tree.

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.