Any law firm’s day-to-day processes involve a number of routine administrative and document management tasks that aren’t directly related to law. Your staff may have to spend too much time on back-office tasks such as processing payments, reviewing legal documents, or handling clerical tasks, all of which can be outsourced to improve efficiency and productivity. Many law firms are short-staffed and this will impact their bottom-line performance. Legal process outsourcing is an excellent option to improve efficiency and productivity, which helps lawyers and their team members to focus on their core tasks related to lawsuits or claim handling.
According to a report from GMI (Global Market Insights), the legal process outsourcing (LPO) market size is expected to grow at over 22% CAGR from 2021 through 2027. The high demand for professional legal assistance at affordable costs is the major factor that is likely to drive the industry’s growth. For years, law firms have been successfully outsourcing certain functions such as accounting and finance management, IT support, document processing and research, as well as general and other administrative tasks.
Some of the outsourcing solutions that can benefit law firms include the following.
E-discovery: This is a crucial litigation support service that is designed to collect potentially relevant data and then extract, index and place it into a database. For the lawsuits they handle, law firms may have to analyze and manage electronically stored information (ESI) including emails, audio or video recordings, presentations, databases or voicemails. eDiscovery process comprises diverse steps such as data identification from all available data sources, preservation and collection of data, data processing to prepare documents for review and production, review and analysis of any errors and warnings, and data production in a variety of formats such as native, PDF, and TIFF. Professional eDiscovery services help attorneys to collect relevant data, and stay organized during trial preparation. They can also save time for core functions.
Legal research: Solid research skills are important for lawyers to craft a winning argument. Legal research and analysis enable lawyers to determine what laws apply to the facts of the case, know the facts that are relevant to their claim, choose the type of remedy they can ask for in court, and what other factors might impact the court’s decision. Effective legal research involves identifying and retrieving the data necessary to support legal decision-making, from primary and secondary sources. A professional research team also develops a hypothesis to conduct the legal research effectively. The services may cover many tasks such as legal drafting, pre-compliance monitoring, compliance implementation, risk-assessment surveys, and more.
Legal transcription: Legal dictations need to be transcribed accurately for use in legal records. Accurate transcripts can be created for recordings of legal proceedings such as pleadings, subpoenas and summons, depositions, interrogations, hearings, wiretaps, interviews, and more. Transcription involves listening to audio or video files related to these proceedings and creating a text document of the contents in a properly formatted manner. The transcript is a legal document. Back office outsourcing companies provide the services of skilled legal transcriptionists to create transcripts in any searchable formats, making it easy to find any information, just at the click of a button.
Data entry: Legal documents data entry is an important but time-consuming process. Any type of legal documents such as immigration work, insurance claim records, business agreements, property related documents, arbitration and litigation forms, and power of attorney forms require accurate data entry. This is a process that is most commonly outsourced considering the amount of time, effort and expenses saved. Reliable data entry companies will also have necessary document safety policies in place to secure legal documents that include confidential details.
Legal data entry services can easily convert all your paperwork into digital format which makes it easy to store data and access information faster.
Document processing: Legal documents processing involves reading, analyzing and annotating volumes of information and evidence. Data processing services include legal document drafting, document conversion, legal coding and indexing, and more. Professional BPO companies are well-equipped to handle even large volume legal document processing tasks and ensure the safe delivery of confidential documents.
Accounting and bookkeeping: Accurate billing, accounting and bookkeeping are important to improve revenue in a law firm. Legal bookkeeping services that can be outsourced include accounts receivable and payables, updating bookkeeping systems, banking reconciliation, chart of accounts, invoice processing, ledger maintenance support, financial reporting, verifying invoices, and more. While bookkeepers record the financial transactions and balance the financial accounts, legal accountants use the data that a bookkeeper records to help the firm make better, and more informed financial decisions. Outsourcing the task provides the opportunity to benefit from the services of expert legal bookkeepers and legal accountants, who can work with your firm to achieve financial growth and succeed.
Legal coding and indexing: Litigation document coding is digitizing paper and electronic documents including depositions, contracts, faxes, evidence documents, e-mails, and other legal documents. Legal coding and indexing services include data capture, document imaging and conversion, document scanning, OCR / Clean up, Objective and subjective coding, and physical/logical unitization. The expert coding team will be familiar with the legal terminologies and they can provide expert documentation support with customized legal coding and indexing services.
Deposition summaries: Depositions are important for litigation. Deposition testimonies often consist of hundreds of pages in the form of detailed conversations. Summarizing these pages in-house will be a hectic process for your staff. These summaries are important for attorneys to prepare for pretrial and ensuing depositions and trial witness exams, and identify noteworthy testimonies and concerns for trial witness impeachment. Legal support services are available for word-by-word transcripts of court depositions. Expert summarizers can summarize depositions and present them in a compact form, in a short time.
Legal outsourcing services provides diverse benefits such as –
- Reduction in costs
- Services from a highly qualified legal team
- Your staff can save time for core work
- Lawyers can enjoy the accelerated workflow
- Lawyers can deepen their expertise by allocating more time for research purposes
So, outsourcing is beneficial to the legal sector. Documentation takes up a considerable amount of a law firm’s time. Before outsourcing you have to consider certain factors, do your research and choose the right outsourcing company that can meet your business needs. Make sure to partner with an experienced business process outsourcing company that can efficiently manage your back-office work, research requirements and other paralegal activities.
