Outsourcing Legal Services Impact On National Law Practices

This special issue of the Comparative Law Yearbook of International Business addresses an important development in the globalization of international law practices, the outsourcing legal services. Practitioners from the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Gibraltar, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States address a range of issues, including outsourcing legal issues from a law department in a company to a law firm, the monopoly of a country’s law firm for legal advice, sending legal advice to partner law firms abroad, and utilizing foreign providers of basic legal and transactional services (such as services offered in India and The Philippines) for routine legal tasks.

This special issue of the Comparative Law Yearbook of International Business addresses an important development in the globalization of international law practices, the outsourcing legal services. Practitioners from the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Gibraltar, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States address a range of issues, including outsourcing legal issues from a law department in a company to a law firm, the monopoly of a country's law firm for legal advice, sending legal advice to partner law firms abroad, and utilizing foreign providers of basic legal and transactional services (such as services offered in India and The Philippines) for routine legal tasks.

Economic globalization is transforming practically every service sector. The legal industry that has long remained insulated too has not remained untouched by the effects of globalization. The outsourcing of legal services in the past one decade has transformed the legal landscape. Legal outsourcing to India is becoming increasingly popular among U.S. and European law firms and corporations. This book broadly seeks to discuss three main topics surrounding legal process outsourcing (LPO): its emerging trends, the legal challenges it raises and the hitherto unrecognized potential it holds. Firstly, this book clarifies concepts of LPO and its operating models practiced by U.S. and U.K. law firms and corporations. Secondly, the outsourcing of legal services creates significant challenges for ethics rules including conflict of interests, attorney-client privilege, supervision and fee sharing. Thirdly, this research explores the hidden potential of LPO to improve access to justice. This book develops an altogether new proposal where Indian LPO professionals could help alleviate the access to justice problem among indigent and low-income populations of the United States.

Economic globalization is transforming practically every service sector. The legal industry that has long remained insulated too has not remained untouched by the effects of globalization. The outsourcing of legal services in the past one decade has transformed the legal landscape. Legal outsourcing to India is becoming increasingly popular among U.S. and European law firms and corporations. This book broadly seeks to discuss three main topics surrounding legal process outsourcing (LPO) : its emerging trends, the legal challenges it raises and the hitherto unrecognized potential it holds. Firstly, this book clarifies concepts of LPO and its operating models practiced by U.S. and U.K. law firms and corporations. Secondly, the outsourcing of legal services creates significant challenges for ethics rules including conflict of interests, attorney-client privilege, supervision and fee sharing. Thirdly, this research explores the hidden potential of LPO to improve access to justice. This book develops an altogether new proposal where Indian LPO professionals could help alleviate the access to justice problem among indigent and low-income populations of the United States.

Is outsourcing right for your law firm?Law firms of all sizes are discovering opportunities from outsourcing some of their core operating functions that have traditionally been performed in-house. This Special Report outlines a highly firm-specific approach to identify and prioritise the components of a business case for outsourcing, as well as in-depth examinations of three representative types of outsourced services that are available to law firms:*Patent research;*Cybersecurity; and *Large-volume document review. It will examine their potential impacts on a law firm's bottom line, and the frequently encountered management challenges in a law firm's relationship with its external service provider. It concludes with a look at the future of outsourcing in the legal services industry.Edited by Norman K Clark, this report is a step-by-step guide to a well-informed outsourcing decision as well as a roadmap for implementing it in a way that produces the best return on the law firm's investment of management attention and resources. It will be of interest to anyone considering the option of outsourcing their core legal service functions, including small and mid-sized law firms, both those in general practice and specialised boutiques.

Here, Mary Lacity, Leslie Willcocks and Andrew Burgess present practices used by clients, providers and advisors to realize value from LSO. The book is based on data from 27 LSO providers, interviews with clients, consulting assignments and lessons learned from prior Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) research. Based on the authors' deep understanding of the evolution of ITO and BPO, and their experiences of sourcing LSO, The Rise of Legal Services Outsourcing addresses the transformation of legal work, LSO strategy, provider selection and contractual governance, as well as predicting the trends that will come to shape the LSO market.

New Directions in Legal Services examines the fast pace of change in the legal services sector, driven in part by new technologies, and considers what the future holds.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the impact of globalization on the legal profession in India.