Legal Outsourcing and its growth in India
This article analyze the emergence of LPO in India, as well as its future growth. The outsourcing originally denoted the practice of sending work to third party companies in the U.S., it gradually expanded to include sending work abroad, a practice that eventuallyeclipsed domestic outsourcing. Offshore outsourcing is not a new phenomenon. Companies have been referring work to foreign third parties for many years. In the 1990's, as organizations began to focus more on cost-saving measures, they started to outsource those functions necessary to run a company but not related specifically to the core business.
The service industry now known as “Business Process Outsourcing” (“BPO in a relatively short period of time, global outsourcing has become a multi-billion dollar industry. Since the turn of the 21st century, growth has snowballed, going from approximately $119 billion in 2000 to approximately $234 billion in 2005. By the end of 2008, revenues are projected to rise to around $310 billion. The United States is one of the biggest consumers of outsourcing services. Approximately 59% of the global trade in outsourced work originates in North America. The next closest consumer is the European Union, which consumes approximately 27% of the market. Love it or hateit, offshoring is here to stay, and the trend appears to be for more offshoring, not less.
Legal Process Offshoring (“LPO”) was developed as a KPO service set for the legal industry. LPO can be traced back as far as 1995, when the law firm Bickel and Brewer first opened a satellite office to processadministrative. The most modern incarnation of LPO dates back to 2001, when GE created a captive center in Gurgaon, India to absorb in-house legal work. The usefulness of captive LPO centers was initially limited because it was difficult to get workflow to and from the captive centers in a timely fashion. Over the last couple of years, technological advancements have enabled service providers to make LPO more responsive—and potentially more useful—to law firms in primary markets such as the United States and United Kingdom.
This article analyze the emergence of LPO in India, as well as its future growth. The outsourcing originally denoted the practice of sending work to third party companies in the U.S., it gradually expanded to include sending work abroad, a practice that eventuallyeclipsed domestic outsourcing. Offshore outsourcing is not a new phenomenon. Companies have been referring work to foreign third parties for many years. In the 1990's, as organizations began to focus more on cost-saving measures, they started to outsource those functions necessary to run a company but not related specifically to the core business.
The service industry now known as “Business Process Outsourcing” (“BPO in a relatively short period of time, global outsourcing has become a multi-billion dollar industry. Since the turn of the 21st century, growth has snowballed, going from approximately $119 billion in 2000 to approximately $234 billion in 2005. By the end of 2008, revenues are projected to rise to around $310 billion. The United States is one of the biggest consumers of outsourcing services. Approximately 59% of the global trade in outsourced work originates in North America. The next closest consumer is the European Union, which consumes approximately 27% of the market. Love it or hateit, offshoring is here to stay, and the trend appears to be for more offshoring, not less.
Legal Process Offshoring (“LPO”) was developed as a KPO service set for the legal industry. LPO can be traced back as far as 1995, when the law firm Bickel and Brewer first opened a satellite office to processadministrative. The most modern incarnation of LPO dates back to 2001, when GE created a captive center in Gurgaon, India to absorb in-house legal work. The usefulness of captive LPO centers was initially limited because it was difficult to get workflow to and from the captive centers in a timely fashion. Over the last couple of years, technological advancements have enabled service providers to make LPO more responsive—and potentially more useful—to law firms in primary markets such as the United States and United Kingdom.
