Friends, there is no doubt about the fact that the Indian legal system has to go a long way and implement newer laws before India can truly become the best destination of choice for off-shoring legal work by foreign law firms and corporations. There needs to be a major change and shift in the attitude of the Indian legislators in the matter. Some proactive action needs to be taken by all in the industry to force, cajole, convince, lure the Indian legislature to enact laws which shall unambiguously establish India to be an extremely LPO friendly country. It is important that by such laws the foreign buyers be made to feel “at home” in India.

Many of you who keep yourselves abreast of the developments in the LPO scenario around the globe must have heard about the “largest deal in the legal market”. But the much spoken about LPO deal between CMS Cameron McKenna and Integreon for a 10-year, period and valued at £583 million seems to be not exclusively for pure legal services. It seems to be for a well coined level of “middle-office services”

Some Indians suffer from a mental “disconnect” whenever it comes to issues about foreign countries. Everything that is “foreign” seems to be like rocket-science to them. This mindset is particularly present in people who have not been groomed up in the comparatively bigger cities in India. I would not take it as a fault on their part; it is just that they never got exposure to bigger things of life and it does not necessarily mean that they cannot adapt themselves to the bigger picture.

Even bright young law graduates who have done well in their law examinations in India, tend to feel that they are just not being able to grasp anything while attending training session/s about the basics of FRCP or CPR. It is not that they do not have the capacity to understand, but the very feeling of dealing with civil procedural codes of US or UK brings in an element of disconnect in their minds. This sense of “disconnect” prevents them from grasping even the very basics of legal theories which are more or less the same as between CPC and CPR or CPC and FRCP.

Though SLA defines the level of the service and it includes the element of quality but it is very necessary that the smallest nitty gritty of measuring quality be extremely well defined. As an overseas client off-shoring legal work you need to be very sure about how you would like to measure the quality of the finished work-product that you receive from the Indian LPO. Such methodology of measuring quality must be put to test by application of such quality measurement parameters on the work of your own attorneys working in your on-shore office. This will allow you to test the feasibility of application of such methodology on any work product.

The most important thing is to understand the people and the environment of the country to which you are off-shoring your work; their culture and attitude, their thinking patterns and behavioral norms.

An average Indian is supposed to be a shy person who would not speak out and talk about his difficulties till he reaches the brink of the cliff. This, I believe, is not an appreciable quality in terms of western standards but the Indians perhaps cannot bring a sea change in their deep rooted attitudes over-night. Needless to say, that, such character trait of Indians is in no way indicative of the fact that they are inefficient.

The offshore outsourcing of legal documents continues to grow, for the reason, both law firms and corporate legal departments of corporates find it essential to cut their expenses for their overall growth and profit. The cost factor is often shown as the best reason to outsource, though in reality, outsourcing can also help you find the best manpower to handle the legal documents. If not entirely, you can depend on an offshore outsourcing firm to process a part of your work, and reduce your workload and provide a better turnaround time.

Many law firms who have never off-shored work are found to be very weary about the work flow plan. They keep on pondering about the method and the methodology in which work shall be assigned to the off-shore LPO and the way in which it shall be brought back to the office of the law firm overseas.

They want to be very sure about seamless exit of assignments and return of finished products. Obviously they have every reason to be very particular on such issues. Depending on the nature of the project, create a proper plan of receiving assignments and sending back finished products. Draw up every detail in a chart; show even the minutest step in that chart so that the foreign law firm is extremely sure that there would be no bottleneck or glitch in the whole process. Gain their confidence by pointing out the back up measures that you have put in place for every portion of the work-flow plan.

While zeroing in on a partner, whether in business or personal life, one has to ask this question. Who matches with my requirements, expectations, capacities, budget etc. etc, etc,.

The method of selecting an LPO vendor is no different. It has to pass the test of all such parameters which are absolutely essential for the smooth running of the collaboration. Yes I have purposely used the word “collaboration” because whether or not you collaborate on pen and paper, the spirit of collaboration needs to be present in every buyer-vendor relationship.

In his Nobel Prize winning paper titled ‘The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism’ economist George Akerlof addressed the problem of information asymmetry which occurs when the seller knows more about a product than the buyer.

Akerlof analyzed the problem of information asymmetry using market for used cars as an example of the problem of quality uncertainty. Akerlof in his market analysis concludes that given to the absence of reliable information about the car condition, a buyer would only be willing to pay average price for a very well maintained used car (cherries), as he has no way of differentiating between an ordinary (lemons), an average and a good car. This in turn would drive out the sellers of good cars who would not be getting fair value for their cars. As a result of the exit of the good car owners, the average quality would come down, causing buyers to revise downward their expectations for any given car. This, in turn, motivates the owners of moderately good cars not to sell, and so on. He goes on to successfully predict that this implosion would continue till the market capsizes under its own weight as a result of unavailability of reliable information.

That has been the mantra for all business owners all over the world and law firms are no exceptions

In a spree to get a chunk of the global market share, medium and big UK law firms are now busy tying up with American law firms through trans-Atlantic mergers. This will allow the UK law firms to gain more business from the global legal circuit thereby increasing their profits and extending their virtual global foot prints.