Law firms are now large and complicated businesses. In order to increase their revenues they now merge, spend money on marketing, pay serious attention to policies, and spread their branches to different places, even abroad.
They, however , are more concerned with increasing their income rather than controlling expenses.
They have started outsourcing back-office functions like mailroom, copy center and payroll, but most importantly in IT. Managing software and systems upgrades, and network operations, are outsourced to a great degree. Law practice itself is also outsourced.
[Read more →]

Legal Process Outsourcing or LPO is one of the latest and fastest growing trends in outsourcing. With the value of legal outsourcing estimated to grow to $4 billion in 2015 from today’s $80 million, there are, however, pockets of resistance and a myriad questions to be answered.
With this in mind and to find best practice solutions for as many concerns as possible, the first international conference on legal outsourcing, will be held on January 16-17, in little more than a week’s time. The India LPO Summit 2008 will be held at Manhattan’s Grand Hyatt Hotel. Sponsored by the foremost business conference organization, American Conference Institute and by SDD Global Solutions and the Mumbai based NewGalexy.
First on the agenda will be a joint presentation on the present condition of the legal outsourcing business and what the future opportunities for providers and clients will be. With the help of real-life case studies first hand experiences will be shared. Ideas on developing global strategies and the optimization of management will also be looked into among other things.
[Read more →]

In the last two years Indian legal services outsourcing has changed outstandingly. Newer services are added by the day. New vendors constantly appear while the existing vendors have spread their wings further.
With the legal services offshoring industry in India now valued at US$146 million and, growing at the tremendous pace of 50%, it is expected to reach $640 million by the end of 2010. At latest count there were over 7,500 employees in the legal offshoring business. Whereas other segments in the KPO space are estimated to be growing at 30% to 35% per annum, legal services have been projected as growing at over 40% per annum.
Companies of all sizes are entering the legal process outsourcing (LPO) space, and the earlier entrants are using every trick in the book to maintain their positions there.
[Read more →]

The Legal Services Bill was given Royal Assent in Britain on 30 October, 2007 and the many special considerations made by ministers in the closing phase of the Bill have been greatly appreciated. It is believed that these will greatly strengthen the legislation.
So what are some of the modifications made and what impact will they have on legal process outsourcing?
It has now been made very clear that the main responsibility for regulation rests with the approved regulators. The Legal Services Board will only get involved when the actions of the regulators are questionable.
[Read more →]

On December 1, 2006, several amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure regarding any corporation’s duty to preserve and produce electronically stored information (ESI) in the face of litigation — or pending litigation — took effect.
Initially there was some confusion in legal enterprises as to what the amendments actually meant and how it affected them. The main question on their minds was whether it meant making drastic alterations to the way electronic data was preserved, retrieved and produced. Until then they had depended mainly on litigation support departments to handle that.
By now they have their answers and are getting used to it, although they are finding it complicated, open to a lot of questions and expensive.
In the legal line of work one constantly has to cultivate the best and most convenient procedures for collecting data and reviewing it. This involves a lot of extra work and many more resources.
[Read more →]

India’s third-largest software maker, Wipro, has announced the opening of an outsourcing center in the Philippines on Thursday. It explains it has been obliged to do this as a result of soaring expenses as well as a shortfall in domestic talent shortage.
From its headquarters in Bangalore, the company has announced the setting up of a 45,000-square-foot (4,180.6-square-metre) facility in Cebu city. It is expected to accommodate 900 employees,
Besides providing customer service the institution will also support Wipro’s global technical and financial accounting.
[Read more →]

Smith Dornan Dehn an international media, entertainment and intellectual property law firm from New York, Los Angeles, and London, launched its legal service offshoring business from Mysore, India about a year ago. Some of Smith Dornan Dehn’s current clients are Sony Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, HBO and the Clinton organization. Its Indian subsidiary is SDD Global Solutions Pvt. Ltd the only legal process outsourcing company in India managed by a United States law firm.
SDD Global Solutions is a 24/365, state-of-the-art, high-end legal services KPO company. It performs high-end legal research, analysis and drafting, and claims to be the equivalent of a global law firm in many ways.
It has already attracted numerous Fortune 100 clients and their accompanying assets and profits, among them a number of international retail brands, some American book publishers and several major television and motion picture companies and law firms.
SDD Global is now in the process of moving to its own 330-employee building. It will soon be hiring 200 new recruits but plans to expand its number of employees to 50,000 in the near future.
The company is funded by SFP Priority Co. Ltd., a member of the SFP Group, a large Asia-based investor, as well as by State Bank of India and investors from Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital, Goldman Sachs, and Cisco Systems.
SDD Global claims to be solving one of the most pressing problems of today’s businesses, i.e. the inadequacy of having legal work done in locations that often are among the most expensive, and the least productive.
It has also described the launch of its India operations from Mysore as a “paradigm shift in the way legal services are provided in the 21st century”.

Justia’s Tim Stanley has recently launched BlawgSearch. This is a search engine that combs through and searches lawyer and law-related blogs. It is bound to be a great research tool for lawyers.
BlawgSearch allows you to search across numerous lawyer blogs to see what other lawyers have to say about a particular case or law and because it filters out irrelevant searches, you find strictly legal blog content here.
At present the search engine is following over 1000 blawgs in 40 categories and is still growing. It has a blawg directory, with subject and locality categories, besides a blawg-rankings system.
[Read more →]

It’s out- The Black Book of Outsourcing-2007.
The book by Douglas Brown and Scott Wilson is an all inclusive directory and guide to the ever expanding arena of outsourcing. It offers expert advice on coping with the political features of outsourcing, operating outsourcing programs and even finding a career in outsourcing.

From guidelines to outsourcing management to opportunities in outsourcing the Black Book of Outsourcing tells it all. The one of a kind book makes a comprehensive and detailed study of one of the fastest growing facts of the global economy-outsourcing.
[Read more →]

Alberto R. Gonzales, a longtime confidant and aide of President Bush, had resigned this year from the post of attorney general following the hullabaloo regarding the sacking of nine federal prosecutors by the Justice Department.
In spite of this controversy he has been bestowed a debatable honor. Gonzales has now been named Lawyer of the Year by the ABA Journal, a publication of the American Bar Association in its January 2008 issue, the same journal that has disagreed with the Bush administration on a number of matters. It reasons that he has been the most prominent newsmaker in the legal world of 2007.
Besides quoting the “slow-motion destruction” of Gonzales, the ABA Journal also predicted that Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, his successor, could be Lawyer of the Year in 2008 while he attempts to restore the reputation of the Justice Department.
ABA Journal’s editor and publisher, Edward A. Adams, has been quoted as saying that the award however, does not serve as a commentary on the effectiveness of Gonzales during his term as attorney general.
Says Adams, “It’s about who has had the most effect in the world of lawyers this year…We’re not saying Gonzales is good or bad. We’re just saying this is the leading newsmaker in our part of the world.”
It was pointed out that the decision to draw attention to Gonzales and Mukasey was not made by ABA but by the magazine’s journalists.
The Justice Department which is investigating allegations of perjury and witness tampering against Gonzales made no comment on the award.