Before outsourcing any work to India, it is first necessary for a firm to look into the kind of legal work it is planning to outsource and prepare its strategy accordingly. The legal outsourcing work can be broadly divided into two types: Legal Knowledge Process Outsourcing (LKPO), and Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO). LKPO is a purely case worker or lawyer’s work and covers mainly legal research, discovery & litigation support, legal analytics & due diligence, and draft contract & document review. On the other hand, LPO is a purely paralegal, legal clerk, legal administrator and legal accountant work. It covers mainly paralegal support, legal admin work, legal accounts, standard document production, legal transcription, and document Management Services. It is a firm’s policy what they want to outsource to Indian market to make the business profitable and effective.
Generally LPO work has been undertaken by using two different models; first model is Back Office Outsourcing and second is Captive Back Office Outsourcing.
Ninety five percent lawyers are outsourcing their work under the first model and Indian outsourcing companies have undertaken multi client instructions to produce the work under this model. The second model is, however, opted by only five percent of the law firms to produce their own work from overseas office while reducing cost and maintain high client confidentiality and conflict of interest. Second model is very expensive and only big law firm can afford this model.
All the other law firms who have undertaken or planning to undertake outsourcing work based upon the first model should take following issues into consideration:
a. Written Contract : To protect conflict of interest and client confidentiality issues, it is very important for a firm to measure all risks involved before outsourcing any legal work to Indian market. A firm must have a written agreement with the outsourcing company which should cover the hierarchy of the work, team responsible, work strategy, backup policy, data protection and security measure, destruction of documents and/or folders policy, training strategy, server sharing strategy, independent infrastructure, and Professional Indemnity Insurance.
b. Not to share infrastructure and facilities : It is very important that when a firm is outsourcing any work to a third party it should make it clear in the agreement that the infrastructure, working team, IT, and server should not be shared with any other law firm to produce work. It is highly recommendable that whenever a firm is negotiating per hour rates, it must negotiate its terms with the outsourcing company; otherwise, it will be in breach of client confidentiality rules of Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).
c. Conflict of Interest: Before outsourcing any work to India, a firm must do a conflict of interest check at two levels; first, at the time of taking instruction from his client and second, when it outsource the same work to an outsourcing company. A firm must request its outsourcing company to provide a conflict check report on each outsourced file to confirm that they are not dealing with the same case for any other solicitors.
d. Client Care and Legal Outsourcing: A law firm which is outsouring its work to a third party must be cautious of the fact that it is bound under Solicitors Professional Code of Conduct 2007 to inform its client accordingly. A firm cannot hide this information from its clients, for they may become skeptical about the quality of work done by foreign lawyers, and thus adversely effect the business of the firm. Under Rule 3 of the Solicitors Professional Code of Conduct 2007, a firm must advice its client about the work it outsourced and give the client a discretion to object if he doesn’t want his work to be outsourced.
e. Training and Regular Contact with Caseworker : Most of the outsourcing projects fail because of minimum monitoring and non regular training to overseas staff. A firm must understand that the success of a legal outsourcing project does not depend upon heavy budget requirements, but it depends upon the way a firm trains its back office staff. A firm must have a video recording of its lectures to give training to new employees. Moreover, it is highly important that a caseworker in India must have direct access through video link with his instructing fee earner to get clear instructions and discuss any quesries.
f. Recruitment of Staff in LPO: A firm planning to outsource its work to India must bear in mind that a person whose name appear on the Roll of Solicitors and who is non-practicing solicitor cannot be employed as a paralegal, legal clerk, legal executive in any outsourcing company without having a practicing certificate.
Furthermore, under the Indian law, an Indian advocate cannot also work full time in a company, law firm or government sector. So any law firm, which want to recruit lawyers from India can only recruit law graduates, not practicing lawyers.
India has a huge potential, the only thing required is to realize and explore it. It is one of the world’s best LPO industry and even at the time of credit crunch it is booming because of larger volumes of work being outsourced to India by US and UK law firms to cut their costs. The study submits that although this is a welcoming approach, and it is beneficial for both Indian economy and UK law firms, there are certain issues which need to be addressed by the UK law firms before outsourcing any work to India; otherwise, it may result into the breach of the Solicitors Professional Code of Conduct 2007.
Before outsourcing any work to India, it is first necessary for a firm to look into the kind of legal work it is planning to outsource and prepare its strategy accordingly. The legal outsourcing work can be broadly divided into two types: Legal Knowledge Process Outsourcing (LKPO), and Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO). LKPO is a purely case worker or lawyer’s work and covers mainly legal research, discovery & litigation support, legal analytics & due diligence, and draft contract & document review. On the other hand, LPO is a purely paralegal, legal clerk, legal administrator and legal accountant work. It covers mainly paralegal support, legal admin work, legal accounts, standard document production, legal transcription, and document Management Services. It is a firm’s policy what they want to outsource to Indian market to make the business profitable and effective.
ReplyDeleteGenerally LPO work has been undertaken by using two different models; first model is Back Office Outsourcing and second is Captive Back Office Outsourcing.
Ninety five percent lawyers are outsourcing their work under the first model and Indian outsourcing companies have undertaken multi client instructions to produce the work under this model. The second model is, however, opted by only five percent of the law firms to produce their own work from overseas office while reducing cost and maintain high client confidentiality and conflict of interest. Second model is very expensive and only big law firm can afford this model.
All the other law firms who have undertaken or planning to undertake outsourcing work based upon the first model should take following issues into consideration:
a. Written Contract : To protect conflict of interest and client confidentiality issues, it is very important for a firm to measure all risks involved before outsourcing any legal work to Indian market. A firm must have a written agreement with the outsourcing company which should cover the hierarchy of the work, team responsible, work strategy, backup policy, data protection and security measure, destruction of documents and/or folders policy, training strategy, server sharing strategy, independent infrastructure, and Professional Indemnity Insurance.
b. Not to share infrastructure and facilities : It is very important that when a firm is outsourcing any work to a third party it should make it clear in the agreement that the infrastructure, working team, IT, and server should not be shared with any other law firm to produce work. It is highly recommendable that whenever a firm is negotiating per hour rates, it must negotiate its terms with the outsourcing company; otherwise, it will be in breach of client confidentiality rules of Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).
c. Conflict of Interest: Before outsourcing any work to India, a firm must do a conflict of interest check at two levels; first, at the time of taking instruction from his client and second, when it outsource the same work to an outsourcing company. A firm must request its outsourcing company to provide a conflict check report on each outsourced file to confirm that they are not dealing with the same case for any other solicitors.
d. Client Care and Legal Outsourcing: A law firm which is outsouring its work to a third party must be cautious of the fact that it is bound under Solicitors Professional Code of Conduct 2007 to inform its client accordingly. A firm cannot hide this information from its clients, for they may become skeptical about the quality of work done by foreign lawyers, and thus adversely effect the business of the firm. Under Rule 3 of the Solicitors Professional Code of Conduct 2007, a firm must advice its client about the work it outsourced and give the client a discretion to object if he doesn’t want his work to be outsourced.
e. Training and Regular Contact with Caseworker : Most of the outsourcing projects fail because of minimum monitoring and non regular training to overseas staff. A firm must understand that the success of a legal outsourcing project does not depend upon heavy budget requirements, but it depends upon the way a firm trains its back office staff. A firm must have a video recording of its lectures to give training to new employees. Moreover, it is highly important that a caseworker in India must have direct access through video link with his instructing fee earner to get clear instructions and discuss any quesries.
f. Recruitment of Staff in LPO: A firm planning to outsource its work to India must bear in mind that a person whose name appear on the Roll of Solicitors and who is non-practicing solicitor cannot be employed as a paralegal, legal clerk, legal executive in any outsourcing company without having a practicing certificate.
Furthermore, under the Indian law, an Indian advocate cannot also work full time in a company, law firm or government sector. So any law firm, which want to recruit lawyers from India can only recruit law graduates, not practicing lawyers.
India has a huge potential, the only thing required is to realize and explore it. It is one of the world’s best LPO industry and even at the time of credit crunch it is booming because of larger volumes of work being outsourced to India by US and UK law firms to cut their costs. The study submits that although this is a welcoming approach, and it is beneficial for both Indian economy and UK law firms, there are certain issues which need to be addressed by the UK law firms before outsourcing any work to India; otherwise, it may result into the breach of the Solicitors Professional Code of Conduct 2007.
ReplyDelete