Legal Process Outsourcing involves in-house legal departments, corporations, law firms or organizations outsource legal work from areas where it is costly to perform, such as the
Great depression in the international trade took place in 1930s and various countries imposed import restrictions for safeguarding their economies. The
Outsourcing is not a new phenomenon. Driven by the competition and the temptation of cheaper labor, the industry took off in the late 1980’s with the rise of outsourcing manufacturing jobs abroad. After the rapid increase in telecommunication, Internet and information technology, outsourcing of white-collar jobs started to take place.[2]
Outsourcing Legal work to
Allen & Overy (UK) and Hammonds (UK) both began outsourcing word processing and document production to
Foreign law firms and the corporations will have many advantages by outsourcing their legal processes to
Common Law System: British ruled
There are over a million English-speaking lawyers and 70,000 English speaking law graduates being produced every year[8].
Cost Saving:Many of the foreign law firms and the corporations choose the
Time saver: Many of the Lawyers in
24x7 operations: Law firms and Corporations in the
Flexibility / Scalability: Law Firms and companies that outsource work to
Focus on core activities: Companies that outsource accounting and legal work to
Technology :LPO service providers in
Control : Companies could still keep complete control on the data and / or their customer accounts. They could retain all the original files and documents, with only the back office work being done by the LPO. Some LPOs even provide the option of working with remote access to the company’s or law firms server. Alternatively, they would get the data uploaded to their own server or get the data scanned and sent by secure e-file share systems. Employees at the LPO service providers usually sign a non-disclosure agreement, which also protects confidentiality of the data.
LPO in other Asian countries:
India is the Leading in the outsourcing legal work to USA and European countries, keeping in view of the achievement made by the Indian LPO’s in India, the other countries like Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Philippines have started their LPO operations recently.
Indian Law and LPO
Advocates Act 1961-
Under the advocates act, the bar council of
Professional Ethics- Under the Bar council of
Information Technology Act 2000 - Creates a civil and criminal liability for breaching privacy or confidentiality of any data or access to the other systems, data theft etc.
Sec.72 of the Act reads as follows- ‘if any person who, in pursuance of any of the powers conferred under this Act, rules or regulations made thereunder, has secured access to any electronic record, book, register, correspondence, information, document or other material without the consent of the person concerned discloses such electronic record, book, register, correspondence, information, document or other material to any other person shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine which may extend to one lakh rupees, or with both[12]’.
Sec.66 of the act reads as follows’ (1) Whoever with the intent of cause or knowing that is likely to cause wrongful loss or damage to the public or any person destroys or deletes or alters any information residing in a computer resource or diminishes its value or utility or affects it injuriously by any means, commits hacking.
(2) Whoever commits hacking shall be punished with imprisonment up to three years, or with fine which may extend up to two lakh rupees, or with both[13].
The Limited Liability Partnership Act 2008[14]-
Newly passed LLP Act- permits foreign firms to register and offer consultation services in
US and
Legal fraternity of
American Bar Association (
Opinion states- “A lawyer may outsource legal or non legal support services provided the lawyer remains ultimately responsible for rendering competent legal services to the client under Model Rule 1.1. In complying with her Rule 1.1 obligations, a lawyer who engages lawyers or non lawyers to provide outsourced legal or non legal services is required to comply with Rules 5.1 and 5.3[15],"
State Bar of
The State Bar of California Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct opined that it is ethically permissible for a California attorney to hire an out-of-state legal services company to research and draft briefs in connection with the California attorney’s representation of a client, provided the attorney complies with certain ethical standards, including: that the attorney at all times retains independent professional judgment, and remain ultimately responsible for the accuracy of the work, and the attorney may have a duty to disclose its arrangement with the client.
San Diego County Bar Association
The San Diego County Bar Association Legal Ethics Committee has opined that a California lawyer who outsource legal work overseas (in this case, drafting of legal documents) does not engage or assist in the unauthorized practice of law so long as the attorney properly supervises the work abroad and is ultimately responsible for the work[16].
Los Angeles County Bar Association
Attorney may ethically enter into the arrangement with the company(LPO) for writing brief provides that the attorney at all times retains and exercises independent professional judgment in connection with the performance of the attorneys legal services for the client and an attorney is require to disclose such arrangements with the company.[17]
Lawyers offering their services as "temporary" lawyers to other lawyers, law firms, or corporate or other institutional legal departments to work or assist on specific projects or matters may offer his or her services individually or through the auspices of a placement agency[18].
The
Whether a lawyer must disclose to the client the use of a temporary lawyer on the client’s matter depends on the nature of the work, the reasonable expectations of the client, and the nature of the relationship between the employing lawyer and the “temporary” lawyer. The employing lawyer generally need not disclose to the client the temporary lawyer’s cost to the lawyer or law firm, and the lawyer may bill the client for the temporary lawyer’s work at any reasonable rate mutually agreeable to the lawyer and client[19].
State Bar of
While a temporary lawyer and the employing firm or corporate law department must be sensitive to the unique problems of conflicts of interest, confidentiality, imputed disqualification, client participation, use of placement agencies and fee division produced by the use of temporary lawyers, there is nothing in the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct that prohibits the use of temporary lawyers[20].
Florida State Bar Association:
A lawyer is not prohibited from engaging the services of an overseas provider to provide paralegal assistance as long as the lawyer adequately addresses ethical obligations relating to assisting the unlicensed practice of law[21],
New York City bar Association-
The Committee on Professional and Judicial Ethics of the Association of the Bar of the City of
The
In its article noted that outsourcing legal work to
According to the report, the positive feedback given by the companies having outsourced their work in the past is leading to many other firms opting for the same idea, which includes some of the 10 largest law companies in the Fortune 500 list.
Legal Service Bill (
Newly passed Legal Service Bill in
Kinds of Lpo in
Captive Lpo’s- Sometimes the the large corporations set up its own centre/subsidiaries in
Joint Ventures: There some of US and
Third Party Vendors: most of the LPO providers in
Services offered by Indian Lpo,s
It is unethical and illegal one giving a Legal Advice or do anything that would constitute practicing law unless holding the License to practice law in that state of
Besides these Indian LPO’s are offering services like legal research, contract drafting, and work related to intellectual property rights, which are known as high end jobs. There are also some lpo in
Legal Research:
Many of the Indian LPO’s today are subscribed to Lexis nexis, west law, find law etc internet legal databases and provides statutory and case law research on many of the areas including contract law, bankruptcy and foreclosure, corporate law, banking law, litigation.
Personal Injury
Personal injury may relate any wrong or damage done to another in his person, property, rights, or reputation. A personal injury can happen at work, in a traffic accident, of faulty product or a faulty repair, a mistake during medical treatment, or slip and fall.
Some of the services in personal injury matter include drafting motions, summons, Case Intake, Opening a new case file in the clients’ software, Calculating Compensation, Drafting Statement of Claim, Updating the files with the information as and when provided by the client in reference to the Plaintiff, Defendant and other parties pertaining to the claim.
Drafting Appeal Briefs, Drafting correspondence letters using templates addressed to the Defendants, Defense Counsel, Insurance Adjusters, Specialists and other physicians whomsoever visited by the plaintiff in the process of his/her treatment, Drafting Writ of summons and Notice of Claims and filing the same in the concerned Courts, Medical Records Review.
Litigation support:
Filing of frivolous suit is on rise in
Bankruptcy and Foreclosure:
Job loss/ unexpected unemployment, sudden illness or medical emergency, death in the family, divorce/loss of second income, excessive debt obligations, job demotion or promotion denials are the main reasons for the increase in Bankruptcy and foreclosure filings.
According to the Q1 2008 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which tracks foreclosure filings (including default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions), 649,917 properties were foreclosed upon during the first quarter of the year, a 23% increase from the previous quarter and a 112% increase from the first quarter of 2007. The report also shows that one in every 194
Immigration:
More than million people migrate to
Contract Drafting and Contract Review:
Most of the country law prescribes that every agreement to be in writing. Every day we hear about the contract taking place between two or more persons or entities. One shall have the legal expertise and the experience in drafting contracts as per client’s requirements. Lpo’s in India having an experienced attorneys and the paralegals, are expertise in Drafting employee contracts, non-disclosure agreements, licensing agreements, supplier agreements, lease agreements, vendor agreements, distributor agreements, Asset Purchase Agreements, Credit Agreements, Consulting Agreements, Merger and Acquisition Agreements, Pledge Agreements, ,Outsourcing Agreements, Service Level Agreements, Employment Agreements, Manufacturing Service Agreements, Marketing Agreements; Security Bonds for Employees, Intellectual Property Agreements; Infrastructure Agreements, Technology Transfer Agreements, Joint Venture Agreements, Software Development and Licensing Agreements, Agency & Franchise Agreements, Receivable Purchase Agreements, Underwriting Agreements and General Commercial Agreements, Shareholder Contracts ,Broker Agreements ,Donation Agreements, Master Purchase and Sale Agreements ,Logistics and Service Agreements , Copyright Agreements and Notices, Private Placement memorandum , Consultancy and Service Agreements, Brokerage Agreements, Notices, Complaints and Briefs, Memorandum of Law.
Contract review:
Contract review is a thinking process which includes clarifying of contract related facts, measure of the feasibility of contract, and forecast of contract risks.
Contract plays a crucial role on management, operations, and business activities of enterprises. The contract review may be classified into 1.Prior Review and Post Review 2.Operation Review and Legal Review 3.Formal Review and Substantive Review.
E-Discovery
E- Discovery (Electronic discovery) is the process where the (electronic data is sought, located, secured, and searched with the intent of using it as evidence in a civil or criminal case. E-discovery can be carried out offline on a particular computer or it can be done on a particular a network. Some times the court can order for the e-discovery on the particular system or network. Data of all types serve as evidence in the court including text, images, calendar files, databases, spreadsheets, audio files, animation, Web sites computer programs, Email and written memos. Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, enacted in late 2006, compels civil litigants to preserve and produce electronic evidence. Federal civil rules 16, Rule 26(a), Rule 26(b), Rule 26(f), Rule 34(a), Rule 34 (b) deals with E-discovery[26].
Intellectual Property Services:
The filing of patent, trademark, copyright applications before the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office)[27] and the IPO (Intellectual property office )[28] growing rapidly every year.
IP Filings under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) grew by 2.4% in 2008. The largest number of applications came from companies from the
Engineers, lawyers, and science graduates work together to assist in IP services. IP services includes prior art searching, drafting background, drafting specifications, drafting claims, drafting summary, preparing drawings, final review and modifications for filing. Final review is performed by an attorney registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
Real Estate
Real estate relates to land along with anything permanently affixed to the land, such as buildings, specifically property that is fixed in location. The type of work Indian LPO organizations doing on Real estate includes Document drafting, Review title deeds and mortgages, Lease Abstraction and analysis, Lease review, Estoppels Certification preparation and review, Tenant recovery calculation and analysis, and Real estate research.
Legal Transcription
Legal Transcription refers to the process of converting or transferring spoken language into written language, or written language into another written medium which are related to legal matters.
The most common type of legal transcription work involves transcribing audio files (of almost any type of legal proceeding).Legal Transcription also includes transcribing recordings of proceedings at meetings, conferences, telephone conversations, interviews, hearings, preparation of legal documents from a shorthand or symbolized format or a digital audio file into a readable, drafting of complaint, answer , motions. To provide high level of accuracy most of the LPO’s in
Future of LPO in
n Forrester Research, a technology and market research company in
n Research firm Value Notes Database Pvt. Ltd. reports that the legal off shoring industry in
n Nasscom notes that LPO can fetch 79,000 jobs in
Conclusion
Legal profession is the noble profession. With the emergence of the legal outsourcing, the Indian lawyer has become a global counsel to advise and give assistance on the
Indian LPO’s are in growing stage and yet to find new innovations in the LPO industry.
The newly passed LLP Act may change the scenario of LPO’s in
It is possible for the Law Firms and the corporations to outsource their work and concentrate on their core activities thereby increasing the productivity and the profitability.
It is possible for an Indian Lawyer to write QLTT (qualified Lawyers Transfer Test) and act as the solicitor. It is possible for an
[2] http://www.law.ufl.edu/students/organizations/fjil/index.shtml Mark B. Baker. "The Technology Dog Ate My Job: the Dog-Eat-Dog World of Offshore Labor Outsourcing."
[3] http://www.bickelbrewer.com/index.php?id=160&backPID=32&begin_at=260&tt_news=420
http://www.shvoong.com/humanities/1635414-legal-process-outsourcing/
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language
[13] http://www.vakilno1.com/bareacts/informationtechnologyact/s66.htm
[17] Los Angeles County Bar Association Professional and Judicial Ethics Formal Opinion No. 518: Ethical Considerations in Outsourcing of Legal Services (2006)
http://law.lexisnexis.com/litigation-news/articles/article.aspx?groupid=EB5UKhAhqzA=&article=R2j75PljXWM=
[23] http://www.law.com/jsp/nylj/index.jsp
[29] http://www.ipr-helpdesk.org/news/news_6613.en.xml.html, http://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2009/article_0002.html
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