Consider this, one of the major legal research companies in the US charges a minimum of $170 per hour for their services. And this figure varies depending on the kind of research involved. Another estimate shows that a single attorney in the US spends anywhere between $1200 and $1400 per year on legal research and writing services. With more than 48000 active legal firms in America, you can imagine the kind of revenue the industry is spending on just one aspect of litigation.
No doubt, legal research is a niche process that calls for well-trained resources and access to the latest tools, but spending a major chunk of your hard-earned revenue on just one aspect of your legal practice is a tough call. It not only adds to your financial woes but also affects your overall operations. To get past this painful situation, smart entrepreneurs outsource legal research services. While saving money is one thing, getting the desired level of services is a completely different ballgame altogether. So, you have to spend some time researching legal outsourcing companies and their service delivery models to get the best of both the worlds. In this article let’s discuss the different outsourcing models in legal research services and find out which one of these suits you best.
Hiring freelance legal researchers
Attorneys and legal firms that want to leverage outsourcing often go for this model of hiring remote resources. From a financial point of view, hiring freelance legal researchers seems to be the most cost-effective. You can easily get them on different online workplaces. Some online resources also give you the benefit of bidding where you can choose the most cost-effective resources. This form of offshore outsourcing of legal research looks very promising. But on the ground, more often than not, this outsourcing model fails to deliver. There are reasons for this fact. First of all legal research is a niche process that calls for well-qualified resources who are proficient with the best practices used in the trade. Such professionals are difficult to find on freelance platforms.
Even if you find qualified attorneys online to take care of your legal research, establishing a healthy work relationship with them is a big challenge. This is simply because freelancers work for a number of clients at the same time and the juggle with deadlines. In doing so, they are not able to deliver the work on time in most cases. Also, once you give your work to a freelancer, you have little or no control of your outsourced process. As most of the freelancers work from their homes, the security of your data cannot be guaranteed. Considering all these vulnerabilities of freelancers, outsourcing a niche process like legal research is not a good idea.
Long term outsourcing contracts
Legal research is something that legal firms and attorneys need on a regular basis. Hence when it comes to outsourcing this critical process, they invariably fall back on long term contracts. Considering the specialized nature of work and its regular demand, this decision seems logical. It also gives them the reassurance of working with a reputed service provider and a team of experienced legal research experts. In this outsourcing arrangement you do get these benefits, but signing long term contracts takes a toll on your financial resources. Also, the lack of flexibility in these agreements leads to unnecessary expenses when the workload is less.
The companies that go for only long term legal research outsourcing agreements often give you little control of the resources working on your project. On the whole, this outsourcing model is much better than hiring freelancers, but it costs you a lot and gives you limited control of your outsourced process.
Hiring dedicated legal research experts
This is a highly customized hiring model that gives you the opportunity to make the most of outsourcing. Here you contact a reputed service provider that specializes in legal process outsourcing and share your requirements. In turn, the vendor identifies the right talent from its team of duly qualified and experienced resources. Once the legal research experts are hired, they start working exclusively for you as an extension of your in-house team. The vendor provides your remote team with infrastructure, software, and hardware to conduct legal research. The good thing about this hiring model is that you can start with a single resource and can scale up your team as and when required. Even if you hire a big team, you can scale it down by giving short notice. In effect, you get your own offshore legal research office at zero cost.
Legal research is a niche process that attorneys and legal firms have to carry out on a regular basis to support their litigations. However, due to the nature of the job and the demand for highly proficient resources, legal practitioners end up spending a lot of their hard-earned revenue and resources on this process. Outsourcing of legal research is the best way out of this situation. But simply jumping on the outsourcing bandwagon won’t be of any help if you don’t find the right vendor and a flexible and scalable outsourcing model. Having examined all the outsourcing options carefully, we can say that hiring a team of dedicated legal researchers with a reputed services provider fits the bill perfectly. SunLexis is one such legal support services company that you can rely on for all your legal services. For more information on our services, drop a line at info@sunlexis.com and one of our experts will get in touch with you.