Challenging Trends in LPO Industry

Outsourcing has been there for more than two decades. Some say that the process of Legal and Knowledge Outsourcing has been an intrinsic business offshoot when the regular and high end Business Process work was low or completely dried up. However, this is not the sole reason why LPO is considered a green pasture for the existing and upcoming service providers. What has made LPO business lucrative is the cost benefits and effectiveness of knowledge intensive high-end work. Best utilization of people assets is an essential strategy. With markets tightened and volatile, companies have relied much on acquisitions to drive growth and to this extent outsourcing has turned out to be a proven tool for improving services and containing their ever increasing operating costs.

The University of NSW survey has considered the three distinct categories of cost, innovation and risk factors as drivers for outsourcing and established their relevant importance in the decision making process. Law firms have finally woken from their slumber to face the reality that there are increasing array of legal work to be outsourced offshore. The exorbitant hourly rates simply do not wash any more with clients when it comes to routine level legal support work. Outsourcing their legal work has surely taken away the burden of ever increasing and nightmarish litigation and legal costs off the shoulders of Corporate Americans. On the other hand outsourcing their legal work has helped the U.S. attorneys and law firms reduce their establishment and professional costs without compromising on quality and professional timeline that is the foremost concern in the legal business. The New York, Florida and San Diego Bar associations have all concluded that subjected to certain safeguards there is no reason why a law firm cannot outsource offshore both support and higher value legal work.

Considering the high margins of profit, some of the big players of the industry are showing their affinity to tap these markets as well. Needless to say, that the technology plays a significant role in outsourcing offshore. It has a two-fold effect. Firstly, it enables the performance of increasingly more complex legal tasks at the simple push of a button and secondly, it has opened a vast pool of common law trained legal talent internationally, who are now available to assist law firms and legal departments in the U.S. and the U.K. Today legal outsourcing is considered a management strategy, very crucial to the corporate output and practice sustainability. It has matured much beyond purely cost reduction to a flexible business model and drive innovation. A recent study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, "Outsourcing comes of age: the rise of collaborative partnering", showed that three quarters of worldwide organizations say access to talent is an important or very important reason why they outsource. Last year we saw some crucial level of VC investment enabling the world's largest BPOs to enter the legal outsourcing business that has placed legal outsourcing companies in the scaled up position.

It is difficult to find a composite of legal aptitude in every law student. Hence the LPO companies are required to diligently impart training following similar methodologies and rigor to maintain quality control. In India the list of LPO players includes on the top, companied like LawScribe, Pangea3, or Quislex, to name a few are the market leaders. The advantage that they utilize in their favor are a band of skilled attorneys and paralegals training resources, legal tools, stability of their on-site office location and wide access to world wide legal research platform, which makes them trust worthy for the clients/law firms.

Apart from the United States and U.K., the most mature outsourcing region in Europe is Scandinavia, with Norway and Sweden the undisputed leaders. Language sensitivity is one reason why European companies often choose near shoring as compared to off shoring. There are, for example, many outsourcing suppliers in Romania and Northern Africa who offer services in French. In Germany, people largely prefer shared services, although outsourcing is popular in the manufacturing industry. That is now gradually being reversed. Legal Outsourcing too is a management science and the issue that is crucial here is one of change management for sure, lawyers historically are not the best managers. The issues pertaining to performance metrics and benchmarks may sound as Hobbit terms to most attorneys.

PromantraLPO

Legal Process Outsourcing is projected to be the second fastest growing segment of the global BPO industry. Legal process outsourcing or LPO as popularly called is not only an attractive proposition for corporations/law firms outside India, but also a great business opportunity for Indian entrepreneurs and professionals. The market is estimated to grow and by 2010 increase to approximately $4 billion business. In the last couple of years the Indian LPO market has seen a substantial expansion by the entry of both, captive as well as third party service provider LPO companies and the existing ITES companies taking a plunge by adding LPO to their existing verticals. Not perturbed by continued market recession, the LPO industry is slated to grow and provide employment to at least 32,000 this year, 40,000 by 2010, and 82,000 by 2015.

This expansion raises questions about the dynamics of establishing and operating an LPO. The objective would certainly revolve round the essentials of providing end-to-end legal services to the global customer. Effectively, LPO is in the process of becoming a logical extension in the business cost pressures that clients undergo. And this in turn makes our existence more viable with a very healthy demand for the quality services.

LPO firms in India are growing and majority of the firms are in for providing large document reviews, litigation and legal back office support, intellectual property and corporate work. Today, the LPO business is all about quality of work and not just generating volumes. Certainly, we are not to be surprised if our clients expect the quality of our legal work to be at a certain high. And why should they accept any lower quality work? The challenges that we face today are cost effectiveness, apprehensions pertaining to quality, data security and attorney-client confidentiality.

PromantraLPO providing quality services

Promantra Synergy Solutions Limited was incorporated in 2003 and started its operations the same year with a vision of pioneering BPO services for the Long Term Health Care Industry and other health related services in the USA. With this goal in mind, the company strategically located its operational headquarter at Hyderabad, India backed by its onsite office at Piscataway, New Jersey, as the center for quality assurance. Promantra has been ranked amongst 100 best Global Outsourcing Company and today it is one of the premier providers of BPO Health Care Services, as well as, niche legal process products to its overseas clients.

Certified to the International Business Standards at ISO 27001:2005 and ISO 9001:2000, we follow a stringent code when it comes to client’s data protection, information security and quality management of our process. Our strong policies and operational strategy have virtually helped us in surpassing our business revenue targets and at the same time maximizing our client’s satisfaction.

It was in the year 2007, when Promantra decided to delve in the business of Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) by adding LPO service to its existing service verticals. PromantraLPO vision has been to enter the much lucrative high end global legal outsourcing market and we focus to achieve our objectives with a highly experienced and professionally trained team of attorneys and paralegals in place.

The Company’s LPO Operation has come a long way since the LPO operation was started and today it serves a long list of clients that includes law firms, attorneys and corporate from all over the United States and Europe. PromantraLPO has indeed carved a niche for itself in the existing global legal market and as of now, our prime focus remains towards expanding our LPO operations further within the US and UK markets.

PromantraLPO, as a part of its stringent Business Model, insists on having a back to back contract with its clients and this is to make sure that there is no spill off when it comes to delivering quality based legal work product. Effectively, this has worked in strengthening business relations with the clients. We have that key advantage and even with today’s market upheaval, Promantra continues to grow with its LPO Operations currently consisting of about 40 member team who works round the clock catering to its client’s need.