According to a report from Grand View Research, the global legal process outsourcing market size that was valued at USD 10.77 billion in 2021, is expected to reach USD 117.89 billion by 2030. The market is predicted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30.9% from 2022 to 2030. The report also states that the market is expected to reach USD 13.67 billion in 2022. Legal process outsourcing services include diverse solutions including contract drafting and management, e-discovery, review & management, compliance assistance, litigation support, and patent support.
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Read our blog What is Legal Process Outsourcing? |
Outsourcing legal activities helps organizations manage time and workforce effectively. Key factors that are expected to boost the market growth include:
- Cost-savings, scalability, and flexibility offered by outsourced legal services
- Outsourcing costs per hour that boosts savings considerably
- Effective utilization of resources
The market is divided into key segments such as location, service and region.
Location
Based on location, the market can be subdivided into on-shore and off-shore outsourcing. The offshore outsourcing segment dominated the market in 2021 and accounted for the maximum share of more than 77.8% of the global revenue. South Africa, India, and the Philippines are popular destinations for LPO, which have a considerable time difference from the U.S. and Europe. The time difference helps provide an around-the-clock workforce, whenever required. Also, countries with common law systems in place would share the same basic legal framework. Thus, the Philippines and India have emerged as leading offshore LPO destinations.
On-shore outsourcing location segment is predicted to register the fastest growth rate over the forecast period. Factors that drive on-shore outsourcing include growing perception among law firms that the service providers are better equipped than their offshore counterparts, and additional benefits such as better control over the operations, enhanced data security, shared regulatory framework, and sophisticated service delivery models.
LPO Services
The services segment is further divided into contract drafting, review & management, compliance assistance, e-discovery, litigation support, patent support, and others. The e-discovery segment dominated the market in 2021 and accounted for the largest share of more than 22.75% of the global revenue. Best handled with a dedicated technical and legal expert, eDiscovery services involve collecting potentially relevant data and then extracting, indexing and placing them into a database.
Law firms consider outsourcing e-discovery for several reasons such as
- the benefit of legal technology expertise
- lower expenses & recovered costs
- data security
- get faster & accurate data
Ownership costs of an e-discovery function mainly include technology implementation, maintenance & employment training, cost of deploying the software and hardware solutions, salaries, and other overhead costs of the in-house support staff. Legal process outsourcing companies shall help in cutting down the high costs associated with the in-house e-discovery solution.
Region
Region-wise, the market is divided into North America (U.S., Canada, Mexico), Europe (Germany, U.K.), Asia Pacific (China, India, Philippines), Latin America (Brazil), and MEA.
Owing to the presence of key offshore locations in India and the Philippines, the Asia Pacific region led the market in 2021 and accounted for a share of over 70.5% of the global revenue and is estimated to expand further at the fastest CAGR from 2022 to 2030.
Latin America also accounted for a considerable market share and is expected to grow at the second-fastest CAGR during the forecast period. The growing legal industry in the North American region has encouraged a large number of firms in the U.S. to outsource repetitive legal activities.
Some of the prominent market players include Clairvolex, Clutch Group, Cobra Legal Solutions LLC, CPA Global Ltd., Evalueserve, Exigent, Infosys Ltd., Integreon Managed Solutions Inc., Legal Advantage LLC, Lex Outsourcing, Lexplosion Solutions Pvt. Ltd., Lexsphere Pvt. Ltd., Mindcrest Inc., Pangea3, QuisLex Inc., and UnitedLex.
Choosing the right legal process outsourcing company is one of the key deciding factors for the success of an LPO program. Businesses can choose on-shore or offshore outsourcing, based on the type of processes to be outsourced. LPO allows law firms to outsource time-consuming activities and focus on their core activities. Major challenges related to LPO adoption include security and confidentiality risks along with ensuring high quality. However, such concerns can be cleared through approaches such as – certifications and building Service-Level Agreements (SLAs). Professional legal process outsourcing companies make sure that their staff has signed Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) and they maintain physical security using effective access control to ensure better data security and confidentiality.
