The India LPO Summit offers you the best practices and solutions regarding the innermost workings of a legal services outsourcing arrangement. The Summit is scheduled to be held on January 16 and 17, 2008 at The Grand Hyatt, New York.

NewGalexy Partners Limited is one of the sponsors of the India LPO Summit. NewGalexy's Co-Founder and CEO Robert Glennie will be making a presentation on "Capitalizing on the Growing Trend of Outsourcing Legal Services Offshore: Examining Current Indian LPO Market Growth to Highlight the Increasing Viability of Offshoring".

Link: http://americanconference.com/Law_Firm_Management/LPO.htm

Legal Services Offshoring: Beyond 2010

This Interim Report on “Legal Services Offshoring: Beyond 2010” outlines the legal services offshoring industry, emerging services. It also provides an evaluation of buyer acceptance and expected trends in 2010 and beyond. The report is based on interviews of legal outsourcing vendors, law firms, in-house legal counsel and consultants.

More on "Offshoring Legal Services to India"

The In-House Lawyer – Risk Management can be Outsourced ( December 2007 / January 2008)

India outsourcing special: legal eagles

India remains a global leader in outsourcing, and has several advantages over other foreign destinations, particularly in professional services for language and historical reasons

Robert Glennie, Accountancy Age 25 May 2006

Banks, insurance companies and even accountants have been outsourcing routine functions for a long time. In-house lawyers - and those in private practice - have been slow to follow that lead. But that is about to change.

With pressure mounting within the in-house legal departments of many large domestic and international companies - both to contain the cost of their legal function and, at the same time, become more involved in the review and adjustment of routine contracts, for risk management purposes - new ways of dealing with contract review need to be found. The tentacles of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act extend to many companies operating in the UK. Where previously organisations checked some aspects of legal risk by senior managers, asking juniors to verify either verbally or by 'signing off' on legal risks in ways designed to flush out 'exceptions' or major risks, now systems need to be put in place to enable these companies to demonstrate that they have proactively examined all contracts and assessed their legal risk.

Finance directors, risk managers, internal auditors and general counsel need to be in a position to put their names to the fact that careful risk assessments have been undertaken. The cost of employing additional lawyers in Europe or the US to undertake large-scale reviews of routine contracts would be prohibitive. The cost of instructing UK, European or US lawyers in private practice to tackle these reviews would be even greater. Hence a growing trend to explore low-cost country sourcing options.

TALKING THE TALK

The latest research shows that India is mounting a serious challenge to China as the first choice for low-cost country sourcing. One advantage is that, due to India having so many disparate languages and dialects, English is the common language for the professions in India. All corporate and commercial legal and accountancy work is conducted in English, university legal training is conducted in English and so is the daily business of the Indian courts.

A second advantage is that Indian lawyers can requalify as English solicitors more easily than, for example, Scottish lawyers. They need only pass the Law Society's examination in legal practice and accounting stage. So training up Indian lawyers to take on large-scale reviews of English-generated contracts is relatively straightforward.

Many lawyers have already done just that. Others have postgraduate UK legal qualifications and all undergo customised training to familiarise themselves with what UK and European clients expect from their professional legal advisers.

Specific training is also given on the areas of UK contract law on which legal teams there will be working on procurement, IT or distribution contracts. Additionally, clients often extend their internal training regimes to embrace Indian lawyers.

The third advantage that India has over other contenders is the sophistication of its legal regime, a particular advantage over China. Commentators suggest that, at present, there seems to be a distinct lack of transparency regarding how companies operate in China, which relates to the legal framework around companies, their trading and their reporting. The laxity of the legal regime impacts in numerous different ways. Intellectual property rights, for example, are much harder to establish, and thus protect, in China compared to India.

The fourth benefit India has to offer is its significant lead on technology and connectivity, compared to its other low-cost country competitors. This is clearly crucial to any outsourcing business model: anyone looking to set up an outsourcing business model needs to be able to create and store contracts electronically. This allows one to build an archive that can be searched and audited both in India and remotely.

A client's general counsel or whoever has been appointed to act as liaison with the remote legal services provider can be given secure access to the part of the IT platform in which that client's work is being undertaken. Regular progress reports can be provided and face-to face meetings often scheduled with the legal services provider's local UK management.

EAGLE EYES

Today, general counsel manage their external legal providers much more actively and closely than ten years ago. The legal services provider in India simply becomes an additional part of the team or panel of external legal providers being used. Strength in technology and telecommunications is clearly vital to this process.

Naturally, cost is crucial part of the reason behind outsourcing. The cost savings are significant. Legal service providers are able to bill their lawyers out at half the cost charged by top firms in the London legal market, simply because of its Indian cost base. Read together with the clear advantages over competitors regarding language, re-qualification and training, sophistication of legal regime, and technological lead India is certainly looking fighting fit in the competition for the title of low-cost country sourcing destination of choice.

This is particularly so given how well its advantages suit the professional services market and given the growth in the global market for professional services. Perhaps it's more a case of Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger than the other way around…

Robert Glennie is co-founder of NewGalexy Partners, a Mumbai-based outsourcing provider
Link: http://www.whatpc.co.uk/accountancyage/features/2156964/india-legal-eagles

Offshoring Legal Services to India: A Study by ValueNotes

Successful offshoring in the legal services space began as early as 1995, pioneered by American law firm Bickel and Brewer. Around 2001, GE began offshoring legal services to its captive center and has been accruing huge savings since then. These early initiatives have today mushroomed to an industry with over 50 service providers, which fall into the following categories:

• Law Firm Captives: dedicated centers of international law firms like Lexadigm, Intellevate and NewGalexy.
• Corporate Captives: In-house legal departments of companies like GE, Cisco, Oracle, Dupont.
• Third party "niche" vendors: focus on providing only legal services, such as IP PRO, Patent Metrix, Pangea3, Mindcrest and Quislex.
• Third party Multiservice BPOs: offer offshore legal services along with other services, and include the likes of Evalueserve, Datamatics, WNS and Manthan.

Link: http://www.valuenotes.biz/bpo/legaloutsourcing.asp

Offshoring Legal Services to India to Grow Tenfold in Four Years

This article is reprinted from Value Notes, a provider of business intelligence, information and research products and services based in Maharashtra, India, which offers a 68-page report on the topic for $395.

Currently, legal services offshoring from India generates $61 million in revenues; this is expected to grow nearly 10 times to reach $605 million by 2010 and cross $I billion by 2015.

Successful offshoring in the legal services space began as early as 1995, pioneered by American law firm Bickel and Brewer. Around 2001, GE began offshoring legal services to its captive center and has been accruing huge savings since then. These early initiatives have today mushroomed to an industry with over 50 service providers, which fall into the following categories:

• Law Firm Captives: dedicated centers of international law firms like Lexadigm, Intellevate and NewGalexy.
• Corporate Captives: In-house legal departments of companies like GE, Cisco, Oracle, Dupont.
• Third party "niche" vendors: focus on providing only legal services, such as IP PRO, Patent Metrix, Pangea3, Mindcrest and Quislex.
• Third party Multiservice BPOs: offer offshore legal services along with other services, and include the likes of Evalueserve, Datamatics, WNS and Manthan.

Apart from the lure of huge cost savings, the Indian legal offshoring growth is being driven primarily by the availability of law graduates in a country where the legal system is similar to those in major English speaking countries like the US and UK.

ValueNotes estimates the current employment in the Indian legal services offshoring segment at around 1,800, but expects this to grow to 24,000 by 2010.

According to Tejal Padwale, analyst at ValueNotes, "Despite the high growth projections, small vendors with undifferentiated low-priced offerings will be threatened by the entry of the large BPOs."

Adds Arun Jethmalani, CEO of ValueNotes, "Much of the high-end, high-priced work will flow to captives rather than third-party vendors, due to reasons of confidentiality and security. We expect captives to grow much faster than third-party vendors over the next few years."

The report "Offshoring Legal services to India" from ValueNotes provides an overview of legal services offshoring and an in depth analysis of the Indian vendor scenario along with profiles of major industry players. The report is designed to help:

• Law Firms, Corporations, Lawyers, Legal publishers looking to outsource/offshore
• Outsourcing consultants evaluate and compare the offerings of vendors
• Offshored Legal service providers to assess their competitive environment
• American and European corporations/law firms looking for Indian partners
• Venture Capital companies looking for investment opportunities
• Researchers looking for detailed information on legal services outsourcing

Law Firms will find this report invaluable in understanding the capabilities of vendors, and selecting the best fit.

The above report is based on secondary data as well as extensive interviews with key people at various legal services outsourcing companies in India.

Link: http://www.lawmarketing.com/pages/articles.asp?Action=Article&ArticleID=481

High-Level Legal Work Sent to Low-Paid Indian Lawyers

By Matthew Richards and Khozem Merchant. This article is reprinted from page 18 of the April 12, 2006 Financial Times "Companies & Markets" section.

When a multinational company makes an acquisition, due diligence on the deal is often carried out by a handful of top law firms and typically performed by highly paid junior staff.

However, in an upcoming acquisition financed by a UK bank in the FTSE 100, the lawyers carrying out due diligence are in fact from India.

NewGalexy, a Mumbai-based company with a small office in London and three FTSE clients, is one of a small but fast-rising crop of Indian companies handling outsourced legal due diligence. Robert Glennie, NewGalexy's founder, says the company offers the same quality of legal support work for half of the cost charged by top firms in London's legal establishment. NewGalexy pays salaries of $12,200-$21,000 to lawyers in India qualified to UK law practice standards.

The trend illustrates how the conservative legal profession is finally joining other highly paid professional services sectors and using offshore outsourcing.

Although foreign law firms are not allowed to set up office in India, many have a "transaction-based" presence in the country and the bigger ones are exploring setting up in-house or "captive" offshore centers to process their global litigation support services.

Liam Brown, chief executive of Integreon, a US-based offshore services provider with 900 staff in Mumbai, says top law firms in the US and UK are under pressure to cut costs by centralizing their often disparate practices and reversing the practice of farming out litigation support work to costly external lawyers.

The logic is not only cost, he adds. As in many of areas of professional services being shipped to India, notably investment banking, outsourcing frees up highly paid staff to focus on the "valued-added" work their expensive education was designed for.

One area of fast growth for legal outsourcing companies is so-called "e-discovery" services where lawyers scrutinize voluminous quantities of emails to find black holes or the embarrassing idle disclosures that could unravel a transaction.

Mr. Brown estimates that the global e-discovery market is worth $1.5 billion and growing by a third annually.

Integreon recently bought an e-discovery unit from US-based Bowne for about $5 million and is confident of achieving revenues of $50 million from the acquisition in three years.

Such is the expectation of the growth of offshore outsourcing by legal firms that Integreon is positioning itself largely as a legal services entity. It is lining up another acquisition that should lift the share of its legal services revenues from 20 per cent to 70 per cent.

Mr. Brown says such legal focus will prepare the company for a move into intellectual property, possibly via an acquisition in a sector where valuations are racing ahead.

For example, south Indian-based Office Tiger, an early mover in offshore legal and other services, strengthened after a joint venture with US legal consultancy Hildebrandt International in 2004, was bought last month by American printer R.R. Donnelley for $250 Million, a multiple of 45 times its 2005 earnings.

Mr. Glennie, who formerly ran the legal arm of professional services firm KPMG, said NewGalexy was also winning work from multinationals.

Such in-house legal teams were increasingly burdened by the arduous, large-scale compliance work demanded by Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, but find it expensive to farm the work out to traditional law firms. US and UK companies therefore regard the India option with relief, with advantages that give it an edge over other low-cost offshore locations. Educated Indians speak English, but generally not French, German or Japanese.

And since most international contracts are governed by English or US law, the potential volume of work that could be done from India is huge.

ValueNotes Database, an Indian research company, predicts legal services offshoring will employ 24,000 people in India by 2010 -- a 10-fold increase from today.

Forrester Research, a US-based research group, forecasts that, by then, 39,000 US legal jobs will have been shifted to low-cost countries.

The Big Four accountancy firms, which compete with law firms for some types of work, are beginning to feel the heat from India-based competitors. Ernst & Young, for example, recently offered to do some post-acquisition "tidying up" work for a FTSE-I00 manufacturer -- for a fee of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The client told E&Y that the same work could be done at much lower cost in India, and gave the job to NewGalexy.

Link: http://www.lawmarketing.com/pages/articles.asp?Action=Article&ArticleID=482