Will legal process outsourcing (LPO) grow in 2007? Will LPO vendors consolidate? When will law departments and law firms “go public” with their offshoring? These are some of the questions addressed in a new article.
Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO): 2007 And Beyond by Mark Ross, with contributions by Ron Friedmann and Neeraja Kandala address these questions. Mark Ross is a UK solicitor and Director at LawScribe and blogger at http://blog.law-scribe.com/; Ron Friedmann is Senior Vice President, Marketing at Integreon and Neeraja Kandala is a Senior Research Analyst with ValueNotes, a company that has done an excellent job tracking and analyzing the LPO market. This article first appeared at Mark Ross’ blog and was subsequently published by Immigration Daily (ILW.COM) in January 2008.
In it, I predict that the LPO market will consolidate because (1) maturing markets usually do, (2) the operational and strategic advantages of scale, and (3) lawyers’ preferences to avoid small suppliers that may not be stable. I also suggest we will see more public acknowledgment of offshoring because of the usual legal market “tipping phenomenon” where no firm wants to first (or 2nd or 3rd) but after a half-dozen, all rush to follow.