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Current LPO Trends in Legal Services Industry
Bengaluru, India — Legal process outsourcing (LPO) in India sees an intense fluctuation keeping LPOs on the edge of their seats. Indian LPOs are facing a dramatic shift starting from discussions on Indian legal business liberalization to a very recent update of International law firms considering insourcing software projects.
A writ petition by Mr. Balaji against Integreon and other companies on practicing law by floating Advocates Act 1961 and Immigration Tax rules made the West cynical about prospects of India’s globalization. Integreon CEO Liam Brown rejected the allegations saying, “We were surprised to hear that our range of LPO services, such as document review, e-discovery, contract management and other legal support services could be confused with the practice of law.”
Even though Mr. Balaji impugned the lawyers’ moral intentions, he also hinted at economic reasoning when highlighting on the Western Market accessibility to Indian lawyers. Indian LPO industry has grown exponentially over these years and recorded a growth of $1 bn. These happenings have made Indian Government think of opening up to international law firms on phase basis, raising hopes for Indian law firms for new avenues of business.
"We have taken a note on legal services to Committee of Secretaries (CoS). The CoS will talk about it shortly," Commerce Secretary Rajeev Kher told Economic Times in New Delhi. "There is a need to bring in certain amount of competition in the sector. But the area of litigation will not be opened up," added the Secretary.
As of now litigation support outsourcing and medico-legal documentation services may remain unaffected. "We have suggested that the foreign law firms should be allowed in phased manners, which would take 5 to 7 years," said Bhasin, President, and the Society for Indian Law Firms (SILF). He also expressed the need liberalization of Bar Council of India (BCI) norms to allow basic quality services.
Raising hopes for medium-sized Indian Legal process outsourcing providers of consolidation with foreign firms, BCI accepted the government’s decision to bring foreign players to the country. Elsewhere in the IT segment, from where LPOs branched out, major Indian players are pressing for IT services automation and shifting some outsourcing projects to onshoring. Even though this may not move away the work from third-party service providers, but replace the customers staff with their own.
However, US retailer Lowe’s has started shifting software projects to their own centers to reduce third-party vendors. While some processes head back to US centers while some others into their global in-house centre (GIC) in Bangalore, as per chief information officer Paul D Ramsay.
Many Indian IT and LPO services companies may wish this to fail, but only future can tell what holds in store for them. But these changes may take another 6-7 years by which IT and LPO firms may develop a different business strategy or open another business avenue.
Rakesh Mohanty
Datascribe Technologies Inc
704-248-6297
rakesh@datascribelpo.com
http://www.datascribelpo.com