Crunch economic times, everyone cutting costs – That is 2009 for corporate world. Attribute it to Credit system goof, Global slowdown, or Bush’s policies (which Obama would be rueing ) it has all come down to greater stress on corporate sector to keep afloat. Litigation support companies have always been under pressure to provide speedy, cost effective and accurate services. This expectation has further risen with increased litigation due to global slowdown and in general.
What does this mean for Litigation Support companies?
The Economic slowdown has posed a challenge to the Litigation Support companies, to cut costs and be more efficient in order to survive. They are challenged to be cost competitive by improving their business processes. E – Discovery and Litigation Support coding are the biggest source of revenues for these companies. Outsourcing these services, is increasingly being accepted as a smarter option, in order to control costs.
What is E – Discovery in Legal Industry
E discovery refers to discovery in Litigation which deals with information in electronic format. When we talk about the services in E Discovery, it comprises of various processes under taken in order to provide electronic documents in desired format to assist in Litigation proceedings. Services may include Meta data Extraction, PDF conversion, bates numbering, PDF stamping, OCR, De Duplication, QA and Submitting back the data to clients in Industry standard formats like Ringtail, Summation, Concordance, etc.
Apart from this another service which is a major bread winner is Litigation support coding also known as Legal Coding. It involves inputting meta data about a document into a litigation support system. Data can be like date created, author, date emailed, etc. for a document.
How to cut on processing costs in a Litigation Support Company?
Litigation support is a man power intensive industry. Smart, knowledgeable work force makes the job fast and accurate. At the same time the challenge to cut on costs brings into play outsourced providers for Litigation support services. Armed with a pool of fluent English speaking and technically qualified computer graduates, countries like India and Philippines are aiming big to get a share of the global Legal outsourcing pie.
Business Model – Legal Process Outsourcing or as popularly know LPO
A parallel team of Litigation Support professionals in a cost competitive country like India, allows a major cut in costs to around just 50% of existing. The trend is moving towards a global work force rather than to employ costly personnel locally. Putting your money where it reaps dividend is a wise way to do it.
There are two Business models which are generally used for Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO):
1) Complete Offshoring - Where a litigation support company can completely offshore the processing needs to an E Discovery and Legal Coding vendor. Here the data is to be supplied to the vendor on hard disk formats or through internet. The vendor processes the data and delivers back the information to the Litigation Support company.
In Complete Offshoring, the Client Delivery manager, can directly interact with the Legal Process Offshoring Vendor’s (LPOV) Project Manager. The Client delivery manager has full control and can directly interact with LPOV team leaders. This allows discussion about the job requirements and job progress in an open environment. All job data to be processed is transferred to the LPOV network either on a hard drive or through internet. The LPOV Project Manager ensures that the jobs are carried out and proper QA is done on the jobs as per client instructions before final delivery of the job.
2) Partial Offshoring - Where all raw data resides on the network of Litigation Support Company. In partial outsourcing one is in full control of all data, processes, software system, etc. The jobs are processed onsite through a VNC/ VPN connection and the offshore staff runs the jobs 24X7. An easy, seamless extension of existing setup which provide phenomenally reduced costs.
In Partial offshoring, in addition to the client side team there is a parallel Offshore LPOV team, to work on the Jobs. Client delivery Manager has some staff locally to manage and get the jobs processed. At the same time a much larger parallel team of Legal Support professionals is employed with the LPOV to work on Client’s jobs. This provides cost effective source of knowledgeable staff which actually work as an extension of Client’s team making client more competitive and thus create more profits and jobs locally as well.
The Client Delivery manager, can directly interact with the Legal Process Offshoring Vendor (LPOV) Project Manager. The Client delivery manager and Client Team leaders have full control on their local teams and also on the LPOV team. There is open and free flow of communication between the two teams at managerial and team lead levels. All job data to be processed is held locally on the Client network. The LPOV team logs in through a VPN & VNC connection and actually runs Document Management Software on client site remotely. The LPOV Project Manager ensures that the jobs are carried out and proper QA is done on the jobs as per client instructions before final delivery of the job.
Both models have been effective in providing a huge cost advantage to the Litigation support company outsourcing its LPO needs. It depends upon company’s policy and business environment that they work in, which decides which Business Model they choose. But for sure, the benefits are immense in terms of reduced costs and better profitability!
Rajan BatishEmail: rajan@batishtechnologies.com
Phone: +91 9872788609
Skype : rajanbatishWeb: http://www.batishtechnologies.com/
Phone: +91 9872788609
Skype : rajanbatishWeb: http://www.batishtechnologies.com/
Rajan is Managing Partner at Batish Technologies and a Litigation Support Consultant.
