With the countdown for 2010 on, it becomes more than necessary and desirable to look at the major events in the legal field and to assess our preparedness for the coming year.
WITH THE countdown for 2010 on, it becomes more than necessary and desirable to look at the major events of the year going by and to assess our preparedness for the coming year.
This year 2009 is testimony to a phenomenal growth in the offshore outsourcing of legal processes wherein a majority of deals were with Indian vendors. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Linklaters, Slaughter and May, Osborne Clarke, Simmons and Simmons, Rio Tinto, Eversheds, Pinsent Masons are a few of the names in the news for outsourcing their legal processes to offshore destinations this year.
Infact as soon as they realized that offshore outsourcing is now the new level of globalization and the company’s, which earlier faced the question of whether or not to outsource were left with the only option to decide when to outsource, the situation moved from a may-be to a must-be. Offshore outsourcing today is neither a desire nor an option rather it is the support system of all globalizing companies, of all who wish to grow in this ever integrating competitive world. As one often tell friends in the industry, “One can't do today's job with yesterday's methods and be in business tomorrow”.
Since the legal department of most corporations is not a revenue generating department, it is always under constant pressure to cut on costs and expenses. After big corporations and large-sized law firms, the time is now right for the solo practitioners, small-size law firms (less than 10 attorneys) and mid-size law firms (less than 50 attorneys) to begin with outsourcing their legal processes to offshore locations like India. Amidst their desire to cut on the back-office costs, they will face low cost deliverable challenges from their competitors and pressure from their clients to provide similar services for lower charges. There is no alternative but to offshore.
Although Contract services, E-discovery and Paralegal support would dominate the outsourcing market, but a new market for Litigation Support is predicted to emerge and flourish in the coming year. Interestingly, solo practitioners, small-size and mid-size law firms together as a group constitute 90 per cent of US and UK legal market and is also the group hardly outsourced to offshore destinations.
