Legal process outsourcing (LPO) is the practice of contracting or hiring a third party to perform and deliver legal services that would otherwise be done by the hirer’s employees or staff.
It can be onshore, where the hirer contracts local LPO vendors, or offshore, with vendors based overseas.
Legal process outsourcing is a trend that has, and still is, gaining popularity among corporate clients and law firms alike; joining other professions like accounting, HR and IT.
Wondering if legal process outsourcing is for you or how your business, a corporate or law firm, stands to benefit from it?
Read on to discover the value of LPO.
Legal services are essential and core to the operations of most, if not all, businesses. Regardless, especially considering the need to watch their bottom line amid dynamics such as economic instability and downturns, businesses are forced to find ways of reducing operational costs.
Through LPO, you can maintain a lean staff in your organization’s legal department hence cutting down on the high costs associated with hiring in-house counsel. Outsourcing legal services also enables you to access legal services at an affordable cost in case your start-up, small or medium-sized entity may not yet have the financial muscle to sustain a legal department.
Contracting LPO vendors gives your law firm access to the services of legal professionals at a significantly lower cost, and also eliminates other costs associated with payroll, e.g taxes.
With increased competition among law firms and client needs for efficient and quality legal services at a lower cost, outsourcing provides a creative way to offer competitive billing rates as it affords you the opportunity to spill over the benefits of low operation costs to your clients. You keep your clients happy by ensuring efficiency and affordability without going out of business- a win-win!
Through legal process outsourcing, your law firm, whether a boutique, small-sized or solo practice is able to take on cases and work that would in ordinary circumstances be too large for you to lack of human resource capacity.
Additionally, it makes it possible for you to expand your business geographically or in terms of scope based on the changing needs of your clients. you are able to do this faster and at a lesser cost as outsourcing eliminates the requirement for intense capital injection for acquiring additional space, investment in infrastructure, and hiring permanent employees.
Legal process outsourcing gives your law firm or business instant access to expertise and experience; especially handy where the work to be done is outside your areas of specialization.
The experience and expertise of your LPO vendors assure you of quality and accuracy in the work you will in turn deliver to your client. It also saves you the time you or your employees would have otherwise had to spend trying to figure out your way around the brief, reducing the turnaround time on your service delivery.
The back office and other mundane, often time-intensive, yet necessary operations of a business tend to increase as the business grows.
These force your employees to stretch and multitask to deliver on your core business function and handle these operations at the same time. Where volumes are high, the possibility of some processes being overlooked increases which may affect your clients and business.
Outsourcing such tasks as client data management and discovery free you and your employees to focus on the core competencies and money-making streams of your business without compromising on the quality of service delivery.
Most businesses are cyclical, moderately to extremely busy in some seasons and moderately slow to very slow in others.
Legal process outsourcing gives you staffing flexibility based on the requirements of your business or law firm. By contracting an LPO vendor, you have the benefit of aligning your hiring needs to those of the business and season; bringing in resources in busy seasons and releasing them in slow ones.
This flexibility cushions your business or law firm from a high wage bill especially during low seasons, all the while giving the additional benefit of the guarantee of a ready workforce of associates and paralegals when the need arises.
Imagine a brief (or several) is halfway done when your employee resigns. You reassign it to another who has to acquaint themselves with it before proceeding with it. Meanwhile, you spend time (and money) to hire and train a replacement who in turn takes time to onboard. Work continues to pile on the employees left requiring overtime and …
Such scenarios are common and often costly to a business, especially law firms.
Legal process outsourcing can help change this narrative as you can immediately hire an LPO vendor. It also allows you to ‘replace’ employees who may be temporarily unavailable for reasons as being on maternity, compassionate or sick leave. This enables your firm to continue to run seamlessly and without interruption.
You are also not rushed when it comes to hiring and you can take time to find a perfect fit for your business without the fear that you will not deliver for your clients.
Undoubtedly, legal process outsourcing makes sense and cents for your business, law firm or not.
To get the best out of legal process outsourcing, it is advisable that you take time to find an LPO vendor who understands your needs. Also, ensure to conduct your due diligence on them to confirm that they are legit and have the expertise matching your needs and can therefore deliver.
Before proceeding with your LPO vendor of choice, ensure to have an agreement setting out the terms of your engagement including the parameters, communication, payment, expected turnaround times, privacy and confidentiality (as may be applicable) etcetera.
Experience these benefits and more with DLS. Contact us today for all your legal process outsourcing needs.
A venture that has been started with great passion by Dushyant Shah, an advocate licensed based in India
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