According to research done in conjunction with the Financial Times Innovative Lawyers Awards, 43% of corporations and 72% of surveyed law firms were currently outsourcing, planned to in the future or were open to the possibility. Thirty three percent (33%) outsource litigation-related document review. A separate survey conducted by European Lawyer found that 61% rely on LSO for assistance with M&A transactions. Ms. Cooper cites the following as major sectors for the LSO market: technology; telecommunications; healthcare; pharmaceuticals; and especially financial services, where banks are cutting costs as a result of unprecedented amounts of legal work.
Corporate legal divisions may possibly seek to check out internal legal SDT choices like shared services or technological developments for “core” legal services. Instances of these kinds of solutions consist of corporate legal representation as well as Mergers and acquisitions pursuits. For legal process considered as core services, legal divisions can always look for ways to outsource particular aspects. For instance, even though patents and trademarks are a core aspect of the business, there might be transactional constituents which subsist within these procedures that may be outsourced.
Outsourcing is the most reliable solution to handle such type of tasks. LPO allows access to global experts in varying areas of law. Accessing external legal talent is also very useful for small firms to fill in the gaps and tap into global legal expertise. Outsourcing to countries like India and China boost a large pool of skilled legal professionals.
Corporations invest significant time and energy on strategic plans. They hire armies of analysts and consultants to develop their mid- to long-term strategies, benchmark their company against the competition, and check budgets against actuals to ensure the strategy is working and ROI is achieved. Law firms, on the other hand, devote much less effort to strategic planning as compared with their corporate clients. Historically, they have paid lip service to planning rituals, and tend to be more reactive than proactive in the way they conduct their business.
Lately, however, firms are beginning to apply more rigor and discipline to the task of measuring and managing the performance of the firm, perhaps as a response to the Great Recession.
Lawyers and legal professionals are being forced to become more active business managers and to go beyond simply servicing clients. There is a need to not only understand the clients’ legal needs but to also understand their businesses and industries at a deeper level. Firms are drawing upon marketing, business development, market insights that come from business intelligence and metrics, and CRM tools to retain and grow business with existing clients more effectively while also attracting new ones. They’re paying more attention to practice group and individual performances. In short, they are beginning to run the firm like a business—not as a collection of billable legal experts.