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.

The real estate sub prime crisis may be bad news for those at home but it’s good news for legal process outsourcing firms (LPOs) in India.
Over burdened with the innumerable numbers of mortgage cases and bankruptcy filings and the paper work they entail, US firms have stepped up outsourcing the work to Indian firms that have proved themselves up to the task. Now, not only are these firms busying themselves with the regular filing, processing and claims tasks they do as a matter of course, but are also undertaking jobs connected to legal analytics, discovery and litigation support, and first-line document drafting.
India has over 200 LPO firms besides its service providers such as Infosys and Wipro to choose from for this. Top of the class are Pangea3, OfficeTiger, Mindcrest , Evalueserve, Integreon, and SDD Global.
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One of the greatest worries for any firm, more so a legal one, is a data breach. Studies have shown that in the last two and a half years more than 200 million records have been breached.
Not only does the firm suffer a loss but it is also obliged to make the data breach known to the respective customer, which normally takes about a month to happen, and can be pretty damaging.
It is, therefore, of vital importance for a firm to plan how it is going to protect all sensitive data and what measures it will take in the case of an incident such as a data breach occurring.
First of all be very sure about the law, both Federal and local. Very often, laws are changed, added to, or modified. If dealing with an interstate or international case of a data breach, you will have to be fully aware of all the laws of all the places involved, even the seemingly unimportant ones. Different states have different definitions of what constitutes a breach of confidence or data loss. Others have different laws with regard to the hierarchy for notifying the various people/organizations affected by it.
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