Performing Diligence on your Outsourcing Vendor
On 25August the ABA released its opinion on legal outsourcing. According to it, legal outsourcing is ethical as long as lawyers appoint suitable providers and abide by the Model Rules.
It would do us good to remind ourselves of the guidelines provided by the ABA on correctly using Legal Process Outsourcing although we may be already be aware of them, and of the Model Rules from time to time.

One very important suggestion was that a lawyer intending to outsource /offshore work must first do diligence on the vendor.
This can be done by
• Meeting the offshore lawyers with whom you will be working.
• Making sure to verify claims of client confidentiality, security and up to the mark standards. Do not take things at face value.
• Finding out about procedures that come under the jurisdiction of the location of your vendor to be.
• Making sure you will be able to enforce confidentiality, and agree only to conflict-check contracts or service-level agreements. Make sure that your vendor is not completely based in an alien location but also has a local US based representative.
• Decide what areas come under your direct supervision, but also ensure that you will be able to supervise and oversee any part of the operation at any time you so choose to.
• Make sure that your client is informed about your intention of outsourcing his/her work.
As a purchaser it is your duty to abide by the appropriate professional requirements and follow them in relation to recruitment, training, security and expertise.

IQPC (the International Quality and Productivity Centre) will be holding its 1st Legal Process Outsourcing conference in Chicago, from Oct 20-22.
It aims at providing its delegates with first hand insight into real life case studies from AM law 200 firms, major corporations, as well as from some of the world’s top 5 LPOs. It is expected to attract top LPO experts who will share their ideas about the current changes taking place in the legal industry.
There will be real case studies touching on Intellectual Property & Contract management, e-discovery & documentation review.
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On January 16, 2008 LEX Outsourcing, a global LPO firm based in Mumbai, India, merged with ATI Avocats to form the Indian law firm, LEX Nexus with effect from September 12.
LEX Outsourcing offers many services to the legal community such as Legal research, contract drafting, litigation support services, business formation, and corporate law in English.
It also provides non-legal services involving legal data entry, transcription and legal billing.
Managing Partner of LEX Outsourcing, Suhail Farooqui believes that LPO services should be provided by legal sector alone or managed by qualified lawyers as they understand the industry and requirements of clients which is why LEX Outsourcing comes so highly recommended.
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When The Black Book of Outsourcing 2008 listed its top ten legal outsourcing companies in March, few were surprised to note that pride of place had been given to the global provider of legal solutions, Clutch Group.
Specializing in Discovery Solutions, Contract Management, Commercial Real Estate Services, Compliance and Legal Research Services, this firm has offices in New York, NY, Washington, DC, Chicago, IL, Cleveland, OH, and Bangalore, India.
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With the Black Book of Outsourcing ranking CPA as the number one Legal Document Review firm for 2008, this top intellectual property management specialist is growing from strength to strength. Now, with the purpose of supplying its clients with Document Review Services of the highest order it has tied up with Applied Discovery Inc., a division of LexisNexis that specializes in providing electronic discovery software and also ranked best in its field.
With this alliance CPA expects its world wide clients to take advantage of a total review and e-discovery solution that will seamlessly coordinate and integrate their software and service providers, thus markedly improving their abilities to complete complex litigation cases easily and successfully.
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On Friday, September 5, the three judges thrown out last year by Pakistan’s recently resigned President Pervez Musharraf were reinstated by the Supreme Court.

It was hoped that this move would cement relations between the various political adversaries there but that has not been the case so far.

At a ceremony on Friday the three judges, Shakirullah Jan, Tassadiq Hussain Jillani, and Syed Jamshed Ali were all sworn back.
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One of the grounds on which legal outsourcing is most vociferously criticized is its ethics. Much has been said for and against it but the fact remains that LPO is now a reality and a fast growing one at that.
Among all the discussions and arguments for and against it, the New York City Bar Association confirmed that there was nothing unethical in outsourcing legal works to overseas lawyers, paralegal, or others as long as it is properly supervised.
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Every legal outsourcing deal must begin with a contractual agreement. This will define how the outsourcing legal firm and the LPO vendor or service provider will function together.
When drawing up such a contractual agreement it is vitally important to have specific procedures and detailed plans in the event of things going wrong included.
This legally binding document will have three significant dates signed by both parties. They are the signature date, the date from when the contract terms will become active and the service commencement date which marks when the vendor will initiate the services.
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Although every one who decides to outsource starts out with the highest expectations they are sometimes disappointed with the outcome. There may be several reasons for this but perhaps, the most common is a breakdown in the relationship between the customer and the service provider.
It is but natural for both parties to want to safeguard their interests but how do they do this without putting the relationship in peril?
Well there are certain precautions one can take to ensure a breakdown in the relationship doesn’t happen.
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At the IBM Rational Software Development Conference last year the main hurdles experienced when outsourcing or offshoring projects to countries like China and India was a hot topic of discussion. One that came to the forefront was Communication.
Communication is one of the most important issues for any offshore outsourced project but the differences in culture will more often than not prove to be a stumbling block. So also could time zone differences. The Rational Conference panel advised outsourcers to use the Rational ClearCase version control tool, and the Rational ClearQuest bug tracking tool among others to help them through this. They advise that these tools can be used to facilitate communicating and coordination with the service providers.
Rational ClearCase allows the outsourcer to revise controls and configure management of the source code and other software development features. It is capable of handling projects with as many developers as there may be. It can be configured to support a large number of SCM (Supply Chain Management) needs. However it can turn out to be pretty expensive for small enterprises.
Rational ClearQuest is a workflow automation tool, particularly its bug tracking system. It can be used to create ordered steps for resources assigned to specific goals.
Originally designed to track bugs in software development projects, it permits a company to organize tasks that are connected to new features.
Alternatively, since these software are pretty expensive, one could decide upon using open source software such as Geeklog, Wiki, Bugzilla and CVS instead. Although they are normally used in IT offshoring projects they could be used in other projects as well.