Legal Process Outsourcing - Basic Questions Law Firms Must Ask
It is very important that all US based law firms /in-house counsels etc who want to outsource legal processes either domestically or to offshore locations like India or Israel must be aware about the pros and cons of Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO).
There are various aspects in outsourcing that needs to be negotiated beforehand itself and once a contract has been signed a good working relationship will have to be maintained.
One must start with evaluating as to what is the type of work that one wishes to be outsourced.
Do you want to outsource the front office work or just the back office works? Once you have decided to outsource the most basic questions to ask the vendors are,How much will LPO cost? How well will the LPO provider be able to deliver? What's it going to be like to work with them? For offshore outsourcing one could be dealing directly with an Indian law firm/ LPO company, but more often the deal may be with a third party LPO service provider who has an office within the US itself.
It is of great importance to make sure that the outsourcing agreement does comply with all obligations for privacy and client confidentiality.
Also a very clear benchmarks and metrics must be established rightly measure success / failure.
It is true that outsourcing to offshore locations like India started with legal support services but has now increasingly grown to outsourcing of legal practice services.
One must calculate as to how much can be actually saved along with all tax advantages.
It is often seen that LPO starts with outsourcing of support services and once the confidence is established one can expand to other legal processes.
Care has to be taken to maintain the quality of LPO work.
There can be risk factors and a risk allocation framework can be developed to control risks.
While handling day to operations one could one face obstacles by way of linguistic or cultural differences? It is possible that things can run bad and disputes have known to occur in LPO.
One must know how to utilize commercial dispute resolutions overseas to enforce commercial rights and litigation.
In such a situation one must be fully prepared for disaster recovery to protect customer and company information.
There are various aspects in outsourcing that needs to be negotiated beforehand itself and once a contract has been signed a good working relationship will have to be maintained.
One must start with evaluating as to what is the type of work that one wishes to be outsourced.
Do you want to outsource the front office work or just the back office works? Once you have decided to outsource the most basic questions to ask the vendors are,
It is of great importance to make sure that the outsourcing agreement does comply with all obligations for privacy and client confidentiality.
Also a very clear benchmarks and metrics must be established rightly measure success / failure.
It is true that outsourcing to offshore locations like India started with legal support services but has now increasingly grown to outsourcing of legal practice services.
One must calculate as to how much can be actually saved along with all tax advantages.
It is often seen that LPO starts with outsourcing of support services and once the confidence is established one can expand to other legal processes.
Care has to be taken to maintain the quality of LPO work.
There can be risk factors and a risk allocation framework can be developed to control risks.
While handling day to operations one could one face obstacles by way of linguistic or cultural differences? It is possible that things can run bad and disputes have known to occur in LPO.
One must know how to utilize commercial dispute resolutions overseas to enforce commercial rights and litigation.
In such a situation one must be fully prepared for disaster recovery to protect customer and company information.