Lawyers often wear too many hats where they are not only providing legal advice  but also acting as a strategist for business operations. Like any other service provider, law firms strive to offer impeccable service at a reasonable rate. Outsourcing legal services gives lawyers that extra edge in providing bespoke solutions for clients.  

The True Meaning of Legal Process Outsourcing

As lawyers work towards transforming and enhancing their service delivery model, they also strive to make it flexible, scalable and efficient. Increasing costs are consistently making it difficult for law firms to continue with their old delivery model. In order to address and sustain the futuristic vision and requirements, lawyers need to identify the right time and right areas, in their firm to implement Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) solutions.

Outsourcing legal services increases the firm’s value by supporting cost-effective growth and improving internal compliance. LPO people solution and process solution brings a rigour to project management.

A partnership with outsourcing companies like SBA also enhances the firm’s legal tech capabilities with its technology solutions. It streamlines legal services and standardises repeatable processes like matter management, contract management, e-billing etc. Most of the LPO providers can offer custom-tailored services, which can help the firm with legal tech implementation and document standardisation.

Various Legal Processes to Outsource

Often, lawyers are swamped with cases, making time and resource management difficult. Hence, Legal Process Outsourcing stands out as the next strategic step for firms to improve their service delivery. Before adopting this strategy, it’s essential to evaluate the significance of specific legal services and determine which processes the firm should outsource to improve its service delivery model and increase profit margins.

Processes within each category which are most commonly outsourced include:

Litigation Support Outsourcing

Litigation support refers to the services that assist with legal proceedings throughout the “pre-trial, trial prep, and trial processes.” These services may include drafting legal documents, conducting research, managing discovery, providing trial support, and creating and maintaining database.

Often, legal associates must block their calendars to provide litigation support, causing law firms to experience cost increases. Outsourcing Litigation Support services help lawyers to avoid undesirable positions in which high legal costs could ultimately impact the direction and success of their litigation strategy.

Conveyancing Outsourcing

Outsourcing conveyancing helps the firm to take down the stress around property transactions so that lawyers have enough space to handle multiple contracts efficiently and match the client’s expectations.

Conveyancing support services providers like SBA have the expertise to handle complex conveyancing tasks. They can help lawyers streamline their conveyancing process and undertake matters such as matter management, conflict searches, OSR lodgement and preparing the PEXA workspace. 

Legal process Outsourcing solutions specifically come in handy during busy periods. Outsourcing providers like SBA can handle fluctuations in the volume of work, ensuring that transactions are completed on time without putting a strain on the in-house legal team.

Contract Management Support

Outsourcing Contract Management focuses on enhancing the value proposition by achieving better compliance with contracts. Contract Management support services helps the lawyer to focus on the risk provisions of the client’s contract and reduce the cycle time from agreement in principle to a signed contract.  Meanwhile, the outsourcing team takes care of tasks like drafting and reviewing the contract, summarising the contract, identifying the key commercial terms, organising the contract management system and maintaining the contract database.

Outsourcing paralegal support services

Quality paralegal support services gives lawyers leverage to keep their attention towards the core aspects of the case and court proceedings. LPO providers act as an extension of law firms and assist lawyers with various types of secretarial tasks like case law research, statutory research, regulatory research, document preparation, drafting pleadings, document management, and case management.

While these paralegal tasks are crucial for the case’s success, outsourcing them streamlines the legal operations so that the internal legal team can concentrate on other aspects of the case like client servicing, trials, depositions etc. Delegating such tasks to a qualified external team brings back the ability to fine-tune various operational projects that significantly impact the firm’s growth.

Legal Administrative Support

Digital transformation has created innovative ways to outsource administrative tasks and build a next generation business that enhances the workflow processes of the firm. Outsourcing companies like SBA accelerate law firms’ race to become futuristic firms by taking care of all their administrative activities and enhancing the operational efficiency of firms.

With the expertise of multiple legal software LPO providers take care of Data Extraction & Entry, Electronic Document Management, Billing Services, scheduling and organising.

Trust Accounting

Trust accounting is a crucial aspect of legal practice, particularly in the areas of estate planning, real estate law, and corporate law. Lawyers must hold funds in trust for their clients and maintain accurate and detailed records of all trust transactions. Trust accounting outsourcing providers can offer various services, including trust account reconciliation, trust account management, trust accounting software, and trust audits

Determining When to Outsource Legal Services

As the legal process outsourcing market has matured, it has become increasingly tech-driven, offering higher levels of capability. For many lawyers, outsourcing represents a sophisticated approach to assessing legal services, which can yield maximum value from their spending. However, the decision to outsource legal services relies heavily on the LPO provider’s domain knowledge and subject matter expertise. Lawyers must assess all aspects of legal outsourcing, including the qualifications of potential providers, which services to outsource, which providers to work with, and when to outsource. Careful consideration ensures that the outsourcing process succeeds and provides the law firm with the desired benefits.