Legal process outsourcing has emerged as a business practice that fetches a plethora of benefits for legal firms, individual attorneys and business houses. But getting success in this endeavor in the very first go is crucial as any roadblock in the middle of the process may prove to be highly detrimental to your business.
Outsourcing any process to an offshore location calls for meticulous planning, identification of the right vendor, and seamless execution. If you are a busy lawyer, a reputed law firm or a thriving business, you would not like to waste your productive time in deriving the desired results from your outsourced legal process.
So, it makes sense to jump into the outsourcing bandwagon with proper planning and preparation. In this article, we will elucidate the different aspects of outsourcing legal work that must be taken care of to guarantee success in the very first go.
There are a number of factors that determine the success of the outsourced legal process. First of all, you should have a clear understanding of what exactly you want to achieve by getting the legal work done from an offshore location. Then you need to draw a detailed roadmap of how exactly you want to achieve your goals. The next step is to find a vendor that can do justice to your specific requirement.
Once the service provider is finalized, you need to sit with them to work out the modalities of service delivery. After taking good care of all these aspects, your next move should be to proceed in a structured way.
Let’s take each step individually and find out ways of working around all the aspects to ensure the success of your venture.
Identify your goals
Legal process outsourcing services is a broad term that may entail a lot of things. To take full advantage of these services, you should have a clear understanding of what exactly you want to achieve by sending your legal work to an offshore location. It requires a certain amount of homework on your part. First of all, you need to identify your non-core business activities that are eating into your productive time.
Core activity is the one that is directly related to revenue generation, the rest of the processes qualify as auxiliary. For example, if you are a legal firm, your core business is to win justice for your client. But to do this core job you need a lot of external help like collecting exhibits, writing deposition summaries, paralegal support, discovery of documents from the internet, also referred to as eDiscovery, etc.
In addition to all these processes, you may have your own unique requirements that are not directly generating revenue. All such activities qualify to be outsourced to legal process outsourcing companies.
After identifying these processes, all you need to do is prepare a detailed draft of what exactly you want to achieve by outsourcing them. It could be anything ranging from time-saving to access to the right skill sets; just make a note of it.
Take time to find the right vendor
After successful completion of the first step, the next key factor to take care of is the service provider. It is the most crucial aspect of outsourcing your legal process. So, it makes sense to spend some time on research. Here are some factors that you must consider before finalizing your vendor.
- Availability of legal talent: It is more to do with the outsourcing destination. You should focus on a location where there is ample availability of well qualified and experienced resources.
For example, India is a developing economy that spends a significant budget amount on higher education. As a result, it produces thousands of law graduates every year. Not all of these well-qualified resources go into litigation and hence join legal outsourcing companies. Another important factor that makes India a great destination for legal process outsourcing is that the jurisprudence of the legal system here is largely derived from the western world.
- Flexible outsourcing models: This is another important factor that you must take into consideration while finalizing your outsourcing partner. In the legal profession, the demand for services keeps on fluctuating from time to time. If you hire a big team of legal support professional at an offshore location, maintaining such a team can be cost-prohibitive in the lean season. So, always go for a service provider that provides you the flexibility to scale up or down your team as per your changing needs.
Prepare a comprehensive service delivery agreement
Once you have identified your outsourcing partner and negotiated on the price of services, insist on getting into a detailed service delivery agreement. Make sure that you are able to collaborate with your remotely working legal resources. Accurately defining things like notice period, team scalability, and quality parameters helps you drive the desired results in a seamless manner. Before handing over the whole project to the vendor, it is advisable that you do a pilot project to check the quality of the services rendered.
Summing up
Legal process outsourcing in India is a tricky business given the technicalities and operational intricacies involved in the process. However, if you follow a structured approach and pay enough attention to the factors discussed above, you can easily reap the benefits of outsourcing legal services to India.
What is more, such an approach to outsourcing legal services keeps you in complete control of your work. SunLexis has been providing customized legal support services to a worldwide clientele for more than 15 years.
Over the years all of our clients have benefited immensely from our customized litigation support services. You can also add value to your core business by outsourcing your legal services to us. To know more about our services, drop a line at info@sunlexis.com.