KPO Consultants

It does not matter whether you are sitting in the front office of an Indian LPO or whether you are heading the entire show ; whether you are leading the business development activity in the LPO that you work for or you are functioning as a junior attorney associate; you must represent your company pretty well.

The moment you open your mouth to talk to an outsider or start rolling your fingers on the key-board to write about your company’s services or may be, pick up the phone to communicate with your potential or existing client, you become the “face” of your company; clients and outsiders will start judging the capacity of the firm by looking at you, seeing your actions and listening to your words.

Recently, the Business Development Head of a Gurgaon based LPO was at the receiving end of huge heat from a foreign Attorney for the former’s writing style in a blog. The BD Head had written an article by the name and style “Bursting the 7 myths behind legal process outsourcing” . The foreign Attorney, amongst other issues highly criticized the “grammar and usage errors” of the Indian LPO’s BD Head. The foreign lawyer contended that with the kind of writing skill that the BD Head had displayed, she could well imagine the quality of work that would be delivered by the attorneys in that LPO. The B D Head had his own set of arguments… no, we aren’t here either to judge the Mr. B D Head or the Ms. American Attorney…all that we want to say is “let us all learn a lesson out of it”.

Given all that is being said in the US and the UK about the demerits of off-shoring legal work to India, let us not give them any further tool in their hands to substantiate their statements. Let us all take responsibility for our actions and see to it that we represent our employers truly well.

Experience says that US law firms judge Indian LPOs on all matters…it is not enough to just deliver right quality of work in right time and in the right measure; in fact it is equally important as to how you write to them, communicate with them, respond to them, understand their issues, talk to them, revert to them and the list is endless.

Doing an LPO business is way different from running an Indian law firm or doing some other business in India. Perhaps even the most veteran Indian lawyer might fall short of the qualities that are required to be in the LPO business. It’s a different ball-game all together, but at the same time it isn’t something impossible…all that we need is a little bit of brushing up, some amount of alertness and a reasonable amount of understanding of the western legal world.

We need to realize that by being in the LPO industry, we have become partners in “Globalized Legal Business”, and this calls for the shouldering of a huge responsibility------wanna tread this challenging path?

“Some of London's magic circle law firms have turned to the streets of Mumbai for completion of work that was once the preserve of young UK lawyers….”

The above lines appeared in  “TIMES ONLINE” in their 15th January 2010 edition.

(http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/support_services/article6988773.ece)

Yes, this is the LPO scenario now; be it Mumbai, Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Hyderabad or Bangalore. But there is a twist in it; not every Indian law graduate is employable in the LPO sector. The reason being, just like other industries, performance of duties in a LPO job also requires specific training, expertise and grooming. After all, it involves the doing of legal assignments of a distinctly different country with an absolutely different set of laws and work culture; in fact it is a job that was once the preserve of young foreign lawyers.

The typical Indian mindset is bound to be a misfit in the LPO space. To be a perfect LPO employee, one has to gear up and get himself trained in the required areas. This calls for professional training. Though clients do provide process specific training during the initial days of transition of processes, but they do not usually provide a general training about the industry as a whole. Before you walk in for your next LPO job interview, ask yourself whether you are well equipped to face all that is in store for you inside the room.

The training that a prospective LPO employee requires is not only about the work and a few processes. Rather it must encompass the whole gamut of issues like work culture, professional ethics, inter personal relationship, responsibility as an LPO employee, effective communication techniques with the client, the US legal market and much more.

The grooming of the candidate needs to be done in such a manner so that he can relate and respond to the work requirement, behavioral pattern, work pattern and ethical consideration of the foreign clients. Without a formal grooming even if you bag an LPO job at the Junior Associate level, it would be difficult for you to “set-into” the entire work environment and further, chances are slim that you shall climb up the ladder to the level of a TL or a Manager within a reasonable time.

Accordingly it is absolutely necessary that an aspiring candidate should go through a proper training prior to joining an LPO company.

A few days back, one of our Legal Consultants and LPO experts was having a chat with an intending investor. The investor being an Indian businessman of repute, queried as to whether law firms in the west would at all want to be clients of small and mid-sized LPOs in India. The investor, having gone through the recent news items about the LPO industry, seemed to be put off by the fact that all big names of the west were off-shoring their work only to the big names of the east…then where does a small/medium Indian LPO stand?

Now let us see the other side of the story. During the past week, the same consultant of ours was having an exchange of mails and conducting web-meetings with a US lawyer who being a partner of a mid-sized law firm was extremely interested to know about the kind of legal work that small Indian LPOs could handle. “Can you please send me a list of all that a small Indian LPO can handle? How much would you bill us for ……..?”, was the specific query of the foreign lawyer.

We are sure that the above two paragraphs shall serve as two important pieces of a jigsaw puzzle for you to easily put them together to get the entire picture.

You are correct; the big names of the west for very many reasons will always off-shore to the big names in the east. But that is not all of the story; there are numerous small to mid-sized law firms in US and UK who would be more than happy to off-shore their work to the small and medium sized LPOs in India. The reason is obvious; the so called big Indian LPOs with their extremely heavy overheads have a very high billing rate which the small and mid-sized foreign law firms will never be willing to shell out. Whereas the small and medium sized LPOs with their moderate overheads shall always be in an advantageous position to cater to the needs and requirements of the small and medium-sized law firms of the western countries.

While small and medium sized LPOs in India will have the advantage of approaching hundreds of small and medium sized law firms in US and UK for selling their services, the so-called big Indian LPOs will have to anxiously wait till the Tintos and Microsofts knock their door.

The basic fact is that an off-shored legal work must necessarily be:

 Conducted in a data-secured environment;

 In consonance with the quality-prescriptions of the client; and

 Delivered to the foreign client within the prescribed turn-around time.

For the fulfillment of the above mantra: It is not all necessary that the Indian LPO be housed in an all-glass-office located in the most expensive area in the uptown of the city or the floor be laid with Persian carpets. Neither is it necessary that the employees be favored with cocktail parties in Five- Star hotels in every quarter of the year.

Such being so, if run with integrity, meticulousness and observance of legal and business ethics, a small/mid-sized Indian LPO can well cater to the needs of the legal off-shoring industry.

So, cheer up, gear up, rise and do all that is needed to give vent to your business-desire of diversifying into the Legal Process Off-Shoring domain……The horizon is too huge and wide; you can tread great distances.

Given the BSkyB verdict, the whole of the outsourcing industry has reason enough to think in terms of the captioned lines. Reportedly EDS will now have to pay through its nose; the marriage has gone sour and the alimony looks very huge.

Undoubtedly, in today’s world the competition is sky high and our targets are, more often than not, set past the moon. Despite so, it’s high time that we all should take a moment out of our busy selling/operating/ transacting/planning/marketing/innovating/ training/negotiating/business developing schedules to ponder over a few simple questions:

1. Have we equipped ourselves to fulfill all that we propose to promise to our customers?

2. Are we trying to sell the “moon” in the name of business?

3. In the name of creating differentiators with our competitors, are we promising something which we aren’t even sure about?

4. What happens when the cat comes out of the bag?

In our spree to gain clients and sign deals let us not do something suicidal; after all we are here to be in business for decades and not days.

It is not only the service providers who are at fault. The buyers would also have to shoulder their fair share of the responsibility of fanning such a dangerous fire. While negotiating an outsourcing/off-shoring deal, many buyers lose sight of the fact that by outsourcing/off-shoring their work, they are actually creating a new partner in their business and extending their offices beyond their shores. The basic psychology that plays with many of them is that the vendor is a wet-sponge; squeeze him for all that we are going to pay him. In their spree to get “value for money” they kind of start expecting things which border into irrationality. This attitude, in turn, fuels vendors to make promises which sometimes turn out difficult to keep. Looks like a viscous cycle, doesn’t it?

It would rather be beneficial for both sides to take a more practicable look of the matter while signing a deal-; an attitude of partnership and mutual understanding must prevail so as to make the whole saga an enjoyable as well as a mutually beneficial one.

The process is very simple---ask what you want--- don’t expect unreasonable and magical things to be done by vendors---before asking for innovative things to be done for you by your vendor, you yourself try outlining your expectations---vendors to disclose what it can actually offer (no colorful promises) --- vendors should keep their cards on the table and discuss solutions--- treat your vendor as a potential partner to take your business to the next step- hand-hold your vendor--- all this being done; ultimately it is you the buyer who is going to win.

We had indicated in our last post that it is now the time for UK Insurance companies to take advantage of the off-shoring system.

The new RTA portal of UK shall reportedly go live from 6th April 2010 and shall handle RTA personal injury claims valued between £1,000 - £10,000. Reportedly it shall handle the claims of about 500, 000 individuals in UK who get injured in road traffic accidents.The portal is funded and managed by the Association of British Insurers.

The first blow that comes to the work-flow of the UK Insurers is that, currently, Insurers have between 60-90 days to accept or deny liability for such personal injury claims – under the new regulations this time frame will be reduced to just 15 days. This is a major issue that the insurance companies shall have to tackle in the new system.

Secondly, despite suffering personal injury in road traffic accidents many individuals prefer not to get into legal wrangling of RTA PI claims. This is because of prolonged longevity of PI cases. They will now not stay away from ventilating their grievances. Being enthused by the new system such category of people affected in road traffic accidents shall want to ventilate their grievances. This will definitely add to the volume of claims and cases being filed in PI matters in UK.

The cumulative effect of the above circumstances will now put a pressure on the UK Insurers and a little knock on their door shall make them think of alternative methods of managing the voluminous and time-starved work flow.

It is now time for the Indian aspirants and entrepreneurs to step into the arena and market their services to the UK insurers. A sustained effort in the matter is bound to yield favorable results thus leading to the strengthening of a lucrative business-vertical in the Indian LPO industry.