From India to the American Lawyer

October 28, 2010

Anthony Lin wrote an intelligent, well-rounded article about LPOs that appears in this month’s American Lawyer. “The Global Issue: Inside the Revolution” is both thoughtfully balanced and solidly optimistic about the future of LPOs. Lin’s stats show LPO providers’ rapid growth, for example citing that Pangea3 “has gone from 350 lawyers at the beginning of the year to 450 lawyers at press time, and hopes to double that number within the next year.”

He also makes a necessary distinction between the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it predictions often tossed around prophesying the eminent demise of law firms, and reality, and his equilibrium of approach is evidenced by his numbers. The volume of legal outsourcing business is estimated to be $1.1 billion by 2014—impressive for a new industry, and catching up to the $1.5 billion U.S. temp lawyer business—but small change when looked at against the $230 billion billed by U.S. law firms in 2007. Pangea3 co-CEO Sanjay Kamlani also puts growth predictions into perspective, comparing LPO to business process outsourcing (BPO), rather to other legal service providers or law firms. “Large BPOs are used to selling a hundred [full time equivalents] at a time. I don’t know that you could sell a hundred FTEs to an in-house legal department for lawyer work.”

“The tsunami is yet to come,” but the LPO tide is definitely rising.

Read Full Article.

Filed under: Legal Process Outsourcing