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Take this!: After BPO and KPO, it's LPO - The Times of India
There is a new star in the BPO industry firmament. It is called LPO-legal process outsourcing. One of the biggest driving forces for the success of law schools, it absorbs many of the 15,000 law graduates that the country churns out every year. NASSCOM estimates about 700 Indian lawyers are currently reaping the LPO boom benefit, debating and documenting the glittering fallouts of globalization-family disputes, patents entertainment, pharma.
Legal outsourcing to India started out as a low-end work that mostly included transcription. But that is a thing of the past. Now, everything from patent application drafting, legal research, pre-litigation documentation, advising clients, analyzing drafted documents, writing software licensing agreements to drafting distribution agreement is being outsourced to Bharat.
Sanjay Kamlani, CEO of Pangea3, a “pure play legal outsourcing firm” in the country, told TOI: “Now with Net and data communication explosion, the entire global legal market is open to Indian law professionals. Legal services are quite expensive overseas. For instance, a senior US lawyer, with five to six years in the business, charges $650 an hour. A junior charges $350.” Indian law graduates will be happy to make Rs 35,000 a month, which would be great going for beginners in any profession. Not just abroad, there are new and generous takers for law graduates in the country.
Even NGOs and the National Human Rights Commission absorb a substantial number of students. Almost 85% of the current batch of Gujarat National Law University (GNLU) proposes to take up jobs as legal advisors in corporate firms here. “Moreover, with the service sector opening up by 2010, according to a WTO agreement, opportunities for international and our own law students will increase,” says Gangotri Chakroborty, professor of law at GNLU.
Taking the cue, IITs are joining the law band-and-brandwagon. In a first, IIT Kharagpur, the oldest of the seven IITs in the country, will now offer a course in law. The law course is part of a programme the institute has taken up to diversify into area beyond engineering.
High-end legal services are likely to lead the next wave of offshoring with about 35,000 lawyers’ jobs likely to move from US to countries like India in the nest five years. In its latest study, NASSCOM says that MNCs, international law firms, publishing and legal research firms are now sourcing specialized legal services to India. By 2015, the number could reach 79,000. there are reports that billing by Indian lawyers to US firms for in-house work ranged from $5million to $15million in 2004.
