According
to a study by LPO program, the global legal process
outsourcing market has reached the $1 billion mark and is continuing its growth
at an annual growth rate of 32 per cent. According to Global Outsourcing
Association of Lawyers blog post on www.kpoconsultants.com,
the global spending on legal services is estimated to be around $250 billion. United
States alone contributes about two-thirds ($167 billion) in terms of legal services.
For law firms and organizations outsourcing of legal services to India can be
considered to be a lucrative option but it is not feasible to outsource every
type of legal service, hence the market for legal services outsourcing stands
at around $111.2 billion. Out of which India can only target only 3.6% ($4
billion) and in reality only 2% ($80 million) has been outsourced till now. This
highlights the fact there is a relatively big untapped market available for the
Indian LPO vendors and other global LPO vendors to exploit which also helped
the industry to cross the billion-dollar mark in 2012. According to a Nasscom market intelligence report, the
LPO segment is expected to touch $15 billion by 2015.
The Indian LPO space is dominated by pure play LPO
vendors such as Pangea3, CPA Global, Unitedlex, Integreon, Intellevate and
Evalueserve. In 2010, Pangea3
became part of Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading provider of intelligent
information to legal and business professionals. In the initial days of Legal
Process Outsourcing (LPO) to India most of the work used to be backend
processing like transcription but the high end work like IP processes, legal
research, pre-litigation documentation, document analysis, preparing software
licensing agreements is presently being outsourced to India along with the low
end work as the Indian LPO vendors have matured and have built the capabilities
in terms of skills and hired talented lawyers. One of the important process for
companies is the patent filing which is also being outsourced to India which is known as Patent Process Outsourcing (PPO and the
process has more than 900 professionals who are qualified and trained to
provide patent related services at a cost of $2,500 compared to $8,000-$12,000
charged by U.S. firms. Currently, the
entire Indian LPO sector only employs some 50,000 people, according to Sanjay
Kamlani, the co-CEO of New York-based Pangea3.
India already has more than a million practicing lawyers, and another
70,000 new graduates are added every year as they pass out from various law
colleges across India and these lawyers are educated in English medium,
similarities between Indian Legal System and U.K., U.S.,
Canada, and parts of Europe, labour cost arbitrage, time zone advantage,
experience in providing various types of outsourcing services, and the clear
edge that Indian LPO vendors have in terms of cost, quality and turnaround
time. Along with the pure play players Indian Outsourcing giants like TCS,
Infosys, Wipro all offer LPO services and they work with very prominent US
clients. Despite the hype in the past years the Indian LPO industry had been
growing steadily but far slower than the other types of outsourcing which are
Information technology, Business process, and Knowledge process. Most of the time the high end work cannot be
outsourced and the reliance on the low end work is not highly profitable and to
increase the high end work Indian LPO vendors are also setting up onshore
centers in United States and United Kingdom. According to ValueNotes, market
intelligence and consulting firm the large pure play LPO players are
financially strong and they can survive in the industry and grow but smaller
pure play LPO players will struggle due to their inability to maintain consistent operating profits, resulting in
rising debt levels. Overall Indian LPO vendors majorly the pure play vendors
will dominate the Global Legal Process Outsourcing Market and will see steady
growth in the next few years.
Table of various services provides by Legal Process Outsourcing Vendors
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Low skilled quantitative tasks consist of:
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High end qualitative tasks include:
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