On LPO (Legal Process Outsourcing)

Supposing you had done extensive research on the Internet about a particular subject and found the same current viewpoint on myriad, well-known news websites. One would normally assume that the viewpoint had a deafening ring of truth to it. Incredibly, it may sometimes be necessary to silence that ring. Let me explain why.

Here at TMG we have been seriously been thinking of putting together a team to provide legal process outsourcing (LPO) services. We did our due diligence in building up marketing intelligence by drilling the Internet wide and deep. We read that the worldwide LPO industry had grown 459% in 2009 alone, and that India’s LPO industry was slated to rake in $1 billion by 2014. In addition, there were relatively few LPO companies (wrt to the market and India’s size) in India. The overall impression was that for a company in India already in the service provider space, this was an ideal area to get into.

This viewpoint was shattered into a million little pieces when we had the good fortune of speaking to a major stakeholder in an existing LPO. The stakeholder (henceforth referred to as “the SH”) told us that US-based freelance lawyers were in such a bad financial way that they are offering their services at $40 per hour. This is not significantly different from the Indian LPO rate of $35 per hour, and as a result the SH’s large LPO was gasping for breath.

The takeaway: The Internet actually doesn’t know everything.