Legal Research and Writing

The legal process outsourcing industry has been in the news for some years. Recently it has come to play a frequent international role as a consequence of the 2008 global financial crisis which burdened many international firms with loads of cases involving litigation and bankruptcies. Now these law firms and their clients were themselves hit by the recession and hence not in the position to pay the standard charges demanded by their local legal services providers. In any case, most companies would any day prefer to cut down cost if they got an opportunity. LPO companies based in developing countries give them this opportunity. Law firms are now able to get a variety of time consuming and expensive legal work done for a fraction of their local cost through offshore legal services providers based in distant countries.

A major percentage of the companies using legal process outsourcing services prefer to outsource legal research and writing services to LPO companies. Broadly, legal research and writing involves the following functions-

• Locating the primary sources of law for the given cases, regulations, statutes, etc.
• Looking through secondary authority sources for background information on a legal subject. Such sources include law reviews, legal treatises, legal dictionaries and legal encyclopedias like Corpus Juris Secundum and American Jurisprudence.
• Conducting research on non-legal sources to find supporting information.

The above tasks can be time consuming and hence quite expensive if done by a qualified legal services provider in a country like the United States who charges tens or even hundreds of dollars by the hour. But the same work can be done very efficiently in countries like India for rates as low as one-fifth of what it costs in the US.

Law firms that outsource legal research work benefit from the highly qualified talent pool that LPO hubs like India can offer. The country has a vast educated work force that is capable of producing high quality legal research writing. Moreover, in recent years India has seen considerable infrastructural development which has created facilities like 24/7 legal process outsourcing services, timely deliveries and full proof security measures. Reputed LPO companies maintain a substantial work force which enables them to complete high volume legal research writing projects in record time.

Apart from saving on cost while getting high quality work delivered on time, law firms that outsource legal research services require a high level of confidentiality to protect sensitive information contained in their legal documents. This facet is taken care of by reputed LPOs that make use of high quality security software to ensure that all sensitive information remains protected under every circumstance.

The age of information technology has bought along with it many marvelous developments; the ability to outsource legal research services is just one of them. This whole process where the legal research writing of a law firm based, for example in in Los Angeles, is seamlessly carried out by a legal services provider working somewhere in a country like India or Philippines is nothing short of amazing if you give it a thought. In fact a few decades back the same thing might have been considered preposterous if not magical. But it is a ubiquitous reality today and is highly beneficial to all associated parties.