BOOM TIME FOR LPO

Asian Legal Business, August 2012

Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) is evolving into a sophisticated mechanism based on innovative processes and technology solutions that also require highly skilled legal professionals at onshore locations. With greater recognition from legal community and large corporations in the U.S., LPO vendors now perform high-end tasks and generate much higher revenues.

Pavan Vaish, UnitedLex

“We clocked $40 million with 670 employees last year,” says Pavan Vaish, global chief operating officer of UnitedLex. This revenue figure of $60,000 to $70,000 per employee, according to him, is far more than the $15,000 and $25,000 averages generated by the business process outsourcing industry and finance and accounting outsourcing respectively.

Furthermore, UnitedLex has registered a 60 percent revenue growth in 2011, and hopes to continue the trend.

It is noteworthy that the stagnation in the major economies of the world has not dampened spirits in the industry, which is benefiting from its ability to provide increasingly higher value addition. A critical aspect of its recent achievements has been global delivery – being capable of delivering services from multiple centres around the world, and most importantly, from close proximity of their client locations. A physical presence in the U.S. and UK not only attracts hitherto reluctant customers, but also helps in devising new cost effective delivery models.

“With very robust processes and extensive use of technology, we create a tripartite relationship between law firm on one side, and company’s legal department on the other,” says Ram Vasudevan, CEO of QuisLex. According to him, the big LPO providers, including QuisLex, are involved in complex work streams relating to litigation, M&As, due diligence, and end-to-end contract management.

With its new-found confidence, the primary pitch of the LPO industry does not any longer centre around cheap delivery options for the traditional legal tasks. Read more... (page 32)