Legal Process Outsourcing

How legal process outsourcing can help law firms?

The Covid-19 pandemic, associated disturbances to the workforce, and the subsequent “Great Resignation” have affected many industries. The law industry - which relies on laborious manual work more than it is evident - experienced this, with even the most successful law firms struggling to keep up.

Law firms or corporate legal departments keep up with the increasing workload with legal process outsourcing (LPO). In fact, with the exceeding workload for legal professionals, the global legal process outsourcing market is rapidly growing, showing signs of going from $15.6 billion in 2022 to $73 billion in 2028, with a CAGR of 27.7%.

Legal services outsourcing for law firms

For law firms or corporate legal departments, outsourcing legal processes can save costs by allowing you to free up your resources from labour-intensive tasks and leverage their expertise to serve the customers better. Outsourcing can help you eliminate repetitive tasks from your workload, leverage technology to make your work faster and more efficient, and focus on your strengths. In short, outsourcing some legal work can help you save time, cut costs, and reduce the workload to focus on your core capabilities and offer improved services to your customers.

What legal processes can you outsource?

Unsurprisingly, new and innovative technologies and skill sets could allow outsourcing more aspects of the legal profession very soon. Depending on your needs and objectives for legal process outsourcing, some of the tasks you can outsource include:

• You can outsource court appearances to freelance lawyers or other law firms to save time while also building billable hours.
• Outsourcing administrative tasks, like answering calls, client intake, appointment scheduling, or data entry, not only helps you save time and money but also allows you to provide better services to your clients on significant matters.
• Outsourcing mass tort campaign intake can help you focus due attention on each lead, ensuring you miss no leads and maximum conversion rates.
• You can save precious time by outsourcing discovery and discovery response and managing costs effectively while ensuring high efficiency with the help of e-discovery tools.
• Outsourcing documentation processes, like drafting contracts, other legal documents, or written casework, can allow you to meet strict deadlines without compromising the quality of work.

Potential challenges to outsourcing legal work

The legal profession, overall, is sensitive and deals with a range of issues like trust, reliability, thoroughness, and even demanding research. The decision to enlist LPO services inherits concerns arising from this. A few potential shortcomings of outsourcing legal processes include:

• Concerns for data breaches and client confidentiality due to data security regulations can deter many from opting for legal services outsourcing.
• Cultural obstacles, language barriers, and differences between international teams can affect communication and influence the quality of work.
• Many law firms face hidden costs, like employee turnover, quality control, or rising operational costs, making budgeting for legal service outsourcing difficult.

However, despite these challenges, the benefits of outsourcing legal processes are significant and can greatly benefit both law firms and corporate legal departments.

Benefits of legal service outsourcing

Legal process outsourcing aims to scale workloads and the number of clients. While the scale-up is clearly common across all industries, law firms can also explore horizontal scaling with industry-specific experts without the overhead of extra workforce. The key benefits of outsourcing your legal work include:

• You can stay competitive by providing high-quality services and going above and beyond for your customers, as your team is not tied up in tedious manual processes.
• You can have a more flexible staff using external assistance instead of continually expanding your in-house team.
• Legal services outsourcing can help you control overhead and save costs; thus, you can offer your services at a lower cost.
• You can give a lighter workload to your team and promote a better work-life balance.
• You can improve your intake process with outsourcing, resulting in higher conversion rates, better ROI, and better retention.
• You can be available to your customers 24/7 while achieving cost savings by minimising overhead costs.
• With your team free from daily operations and repetitive tasks, you can focus on growing your business and planning for the future.

Legal services outsourcing also gives you access to next-gen legal technologies, allowing you to streamline and automate legal processes that would otherwise be time-consuming, costly, and prone to human errors.

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How can Infosys BPM help?

Infosys BPM legal process outsourcing providers partner with legal authorities and law firms to streamline, digitally transform and automate legal tasks and processes, allowing your team to utilise their experience and expertise effectively and efficiently.