The Hindu Business Line : Uptake potential seen high for legal process outsourcing sector

Bangalore, June 9 Players in the country’s Rs 1,000-crore legal process outsourcing industry have to strengthen both their legal and process knowledge to build a scalable model for legal services. “India needs to invest in people, technology and process to offer the complete set of services and total solutions across the full value chain,” said Mr Matthew Banks, Senior Vice-President, Legal Services, Integreon.

He was speaking at session on ‘India as a destination for legal services’ during the BPO Strategy Summit 2008 on Monday.

Growth outlook

Having garnered just about 3-4 per cent share of the Rs 20,000-crore global LPO market, the uptake has been slower than expected but there is potential to grow rapidly.

Mr Shuva Mandal, Managing Partner, South India, FoxMandal Little, observed that that scalability in the industry is possible only if Indian companies forge business relationships with global companies in the form of joint ventures. “Lack of marketing and data protection laws not being strong enough are some of the hindering factors for growth of the industry,” he said.

3 categories

The industry is working on three categories of services: low-end work like record keeping, middle-level services like legal advice and HR mobility and high-end legal advisory services. Growth areas for the industry would be in litigation document review services, contract management services and IP services.

Mr Sanjay Kamlani, Co-Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, Pangea3 LLC, called this an ‘inflection stage’. By 2010, the India LPO industry would be worth about Rs 2,500 crore and is expected to employ close to 32,000 people, according to panelists at the summit.