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Large law firms and in house legal departments of Fortune 500 enterprises have enjoyed the benefits of outsourcing (quicker turnaround and lower costs) with success for quite some time in the United States.
On the other hand, small and midsize enterprises and law firms have just begun to outsource legal work to enjoy the same benefits (of quicker turnaround and lower cost) that larger entities have enjoyed thanks to
- wider availability and lower cost of technology needed to outsource legal work and
- arrival of a new breed of vendors addressing the unique requirements of small and midsize enterprises (or law firms)
What legal work can be outsourced?
Any work that can be done without requiring face-to-face interaction with clients or physical presence in a court of law can be outsourced.
Some of the typical examples of work outsourced by bigger corporations and law firms are:
It is easy to outsource lower level work including drafting, discovery, coding and research.
The technology that facilitated collaborative working across globe that was within the reach of big enterprises is now available to smaller enterprises and firms at affordable cost levels. A safe and private network can be set up between your enterprise or firm and an outsourced service provider around the world for the price of an internet connection to your local ISP and a high quality firewall. Most of the standard software applications facilitate multi user collaboration in any case. A few more users around the globe do not make any difference.
Lawyers in an emerging economy like India are fully familiar with US law and have several years experience in doing legal work for US law firms and in house legal departments of large corporations. Because of far lower cost levels, outsourced service providers tend to deploy lawyers for even paralegal work. This “higher competence” is one major reason for superior quality of work.
Why should you outsource legal work?
Three main benefits:
- Increase in quality of work:
Outsourced service providers typically tend to have two advantages. The large size, stemming from aggregation of business from various clients, makes
(a) investment in technology feasible and
(b) acquisition and efficient utilization of competence and capacity possible.
This results in significant improvement in quality of work.
- Reduction in cost by at least 70%:
As a law firm, you could improve the “profit per partner” significantly providing you the ability to retain star partners in your practice. As a business enterprise you could reduce the spend level of your in house legal department or handle thrice the work for the same spend level.
- Quicker turnaround time:
Our delivery centers work during your night time. You would find your work (left with us the previous evening) completed and available for you when you arrive in the morning.
Can a small enterprise/firm outsource successfully?
Successful outsourcing for a small/midsize business enterprise or law firm depends on the right choice of an outsourced service provider.
We have rich experience with small and midsize enterprises and law firms. We understand that such enterprises/firms require:
- Personalized service to their clients
- Flexibility in meeting varying requirements
- Minimum upfront investment, and
- Quick realization of benefits
Each business or law firm has its own DNA in handling legal work. Any outsourced vendor would have to conform to this DNA to reinforce the unique selling proposition of each business or law firm.
The outsourced service provider should understand personalized service, have flexibility, minimize upfront investment and facilitate quick realization of benefits; all without altering the DNA of the enterprise/firm.
We understand small and midsize enterprises better. We have proven credentials in working with small and midsize enterprises.
We have expertise in legal services:
We prepare regulatory filings (for filing with SEC) for a firm in New York.
We prepare registration statements for a law firm in New York.
We draft, review and manage contracts for a business enterprise in New York.
We have several lawyers and paralegal professionals in our team who are fully familiar with technology and US law.
We are happy to provide you:
- Dedicated legal professionals on a full time basis (starting from a fraction of a legal professional’s time to as many as you want) and charge you a “time based price” or
- Service on a “full responsibility” basis and charge you a “document based price” after we have an understanding of the complexity of work and the average time taken to do the work.
Upfront investment is minimal to secure your network. You need to provide us access to your preferred discovery management or document management system. We would take care of the rest.
Recurring costs are confined to our invoices for services.
Our customers tend to save at least 50% of the total cost (salaries, benefits, facility costs etc) on outsourcing processes to us. We collect a refundable deposit equivalent to one month’s anticipated billing to cover training costs.
How much would it cost?
We are happy to provide you:
- Dedicated legal professionals on a full time basis (starting from a fraction of a legal professional’s time to as many as you want) and charge you a “time based price” or
- Service on a “full responsibility” basis and charge you a “document based price” after we have an understanding of the complexity of work and the average time taken to do the work.
Upfront investment is minimal to secure your network. You need to provide us access to your preferred discovery management or document management system. We would take care of the rest.
Recurring costs are confined to our invoices for services.
Our customers tend to save at least 50% of the total cost (salaries, benefits, facility costs etc) on outsourcing processes to us. We collect a refundable deposit equivalent to one month’s anticipated billing to cover training costs. |
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Contract drafting, review and management
We prepare first-cut drafts of contracts that are fit for purpose and conform to your house style by using:
- Standard templates that conform to your house style and
- Unique variables relating to each contract
Your lawyers would still be in control over the quality of the draft and enforceability in courts of law without having to log expensive time in preparing the first cut draft.
Our lawyers would analyze your drafts, prepare standard templates and develop the variables unique to each contract including “inputs” that fill the blanks (like names and addresses of counterparties) and a checklist of “clauses” that you might require to be added to address the unique requirements of each agreement.
Your lawyers need to provide the variables and the checklist of clauses they desire to be added or removed.
Our lawyers would prepare a draft that conforms to your house style and is fit for purpose; review for clarity and enforceability of terms and transmit the first-cut draft for your review and modification.
Our clients have experienced a rapid reduction in the time they need to spend in finalizing a contract as we work together.
We can handle a wide variety of contracts including contracts for:
- Sale of securities and derivatives
- Sale of goods or services
- Sale or mortgage of property
- Lease of property
- Lease of equipments
- Employment etc
We can maintain the templates on an ongoing basis to incorporate all learning and cascading changes desired.
We can manage your contracts by maintaining a comprehensive database of all your contracts that provide:
- Contract information (Purpose, Period, Entities, Addresses, Counsel, Validity, Termination rights, Applicable law, Jurisdiction etc)
- Summary of terms
- History of notices
We can summarize all obligations and covenants (to facilitate compliance) and all rights (to enforce compliance).
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Litigation Support
Our litigation support services include
- Discovery management,
- Review
- Analysis and coding and
- Presentation
to help your lawyers focus on successfully winning or defending cases.
Rapid discovery of useful documents stacked up by case issue and priority (out of millions of pages) is essential to increase the probability of winning a case. Time taken to acquire analyzed and stacked documentary support is more important; and the cost to get this done is a close second.
We help your lawyers to stay focused on winning the case by providing discovery management support. Our services include:
- Understanding case issues and priorities
- Determination of collecting strategy
- Determination of work processes to speed up and yet not miss out on collecting documents
- Quick focus on most useful documents by continuous elimination of irrelevant items
- Quick analysis of documents for materiality, relevance, confidentiality and privilege; rapid automated codification and validation
- Quick production of documents to facilitate rapid internalization and access
We can work with your proprietary document discovery management system or any standard off-the-shelf solution including ConcordanceFYI ™ and CaseLogistix ™.
In spite of increasing popularity of e-discovery, physical paperwork has continued to stay. We help your lawyers by reviewing physical paper documents and codifying them for rapid prioritization and access.
We measure our success by reducing your attorney’s document review time and cost. Not just by being more competitive than other providers in discovery process.
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Registration and defense of IP rights
Our lawyers (supported by domain professionals) can support you in
- Prior Art Search,
- Assessment of patentability,
- Patent proofing,
- Invention disclosure evaluation and
- Drafting the application for patents.
We offer support in IP Asset management with review of potential or existing infringements and in litigations to protect against such infringements.
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Legal research
We conduct research on industry standard private databases as well as public domain databases to provide research support to your team of lawyers to win/defend litigation or to provide counsel to clients on complex issues.
Our research support includes:
- Reviewing legislation
- Reviewing case law precedence
- Reviewing journals
- Reviewing contracts and
- Preparing summaries and abstracts.
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