Impact of the US recession on Indian Legal Process Outsourcing

LPO has the potential to become one of the sunshine sectors for the Indian Economy. IT companies, non-outsourcing and non-legal entities, captive and large Indian law firms are expressing interest in it. Right now only about 30% of the top ten Indian BPO vendors have shown interest to enter this segment. But according to industry experts, Most of the giant BPO industries also keenly watching and analyzing the marketing trend to enter this business in fore future.

Several foreclosure-related assignments from US banks and law firms have been keeping Indian LPOs occupied, besides the usual assignments like indexing and coding to database maintenance, patent support, contract review and management, litigation support and legal compliance.

When you lose something on one hand you are destined to get something else on the other. This simple law of nature seems to be relevant in the case of the impact of the US recession on Indian industries. Though the disaster in the US economy has badly hit the Indian IT sector, it is also giving ample business scope for the Legal Processing Outsourcing (LPOs) segment in the country.

With many top monetary firms, investment banks and enterprises declared bankrupt and many more to do same in near future, there’s a huge rise in demand for legal expertise and law consultancy services in US. According to a survey conducted by law department consultant Rees Morrison and American Lawyer editor Aric Press, the US law departments will spend about US$ 2 billion on legal outsourcing by 2013.

Further, it says, US corporate law departments will spend about 3 per cent of their budget on legal outsourcing, including the LPO. In this context, LPO India (LPO in India) is widely regarded as affordable, efficient and skilled. Indian LPO industry will play a major role in fulfilling this legal outsourcing demand, and already it is witnessing rise in the work flow amount in past few months.