The Outsourcing Of Legal Services

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.

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.

As a market estimated to be worth $2.4 billion globally and growing rapidly, all legal firms and in-house counsels will need to consider the opportunities and risks afforded by Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO).

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.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This edited collection provides a comprehensive analysis of the differences and similarities between civil legal aid schemes in the Nordic countries whilst outlining recent legal aid transformations in their respective welfare states. Based on in-depth studies of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland, the authors compare these cases with legal aid in Europe and the US to examine whether a single, unique Nordic model exists. Contextualizing Nordic legal aid in relation to welfare ideology and human rights, Hammerslev and Halvorsen Rønning consider whether flaws in the welfare state exist, and how legal aid affects disadvantaged citizens. Concluding that the five countries all have very different legal aid schemes, the authors explore an important general trend: welfare states increasingly outsourcing legal aid to the market and the third sector through both membership organizations and smaller voluntary organizations. A methodical and compassionate text, this book will be of special interest to scholars and students of the criminal justice, the welfare state, and the legal aid system.

This book compels the legal profession to question its current identity and to aspire to become a strategic partner for corporate executives, clients and stakeholders, transforming legal into a function that creates incremental value. It provides a uniquely broad range of forward-looking perspectives from several different key-players in the legal industry: in-house legal, law firms, LPO’s, legal tech, HR, associations and academia. This publication is a platform for leading legal professionals that offers a new perspective on the accelerating transformation in legal. Combining expert contributions with editorial insights, it argues that the new legal function will shift from a paradigm of security to one of opportunity; that future corporate lawyers will no longer primarily be negotiators, litigators and administrators, but that instead they will be coaches, arbiters and intrapreneurs; that legal knowledge and data-based services will become a commodity; and that analytics and measurement will be key drivers of the future of the profession. A must-read for all legal professionals, this book sets the course for revitalizing the profession.

Written for both lawyers and business people, Outsourcing: Law and Business is the first complete guide to all aspects of these complex, strategic arrangements. It offers in-depth practical guidance to both legal and business issues -- fee structures, service levels and governance models -- to help outsourcing customers and service providers structure and implement transactions effectively. Topics covered include: types of outsourcing transactions; choosing an outsourcing team; choosing an outsourcing provider; defining services provided, responsibilities, and procedures; knowledge sharing and intellectual property rights; service level standards and metrics; fee and pricing models; human resources issues, including U.S. and international law and regulation; business continuity issues; grounds for termination; confidentiality; customers' privacy and data; compliance with state, federal and international security regulations; risk management and liability; documenting and implementing a governance structure; dispute resolution; and new approaches to outsourcing transactions. For lawyers and business people who want authoritative, forward-looking guidance to outsourcing law and strategy, this new book is the ultimate resource.