Legal outsourcing has become a modern way of legal business. Few law firms can restrain from contracting lawyers if they want to stay afloat. Here are a few things you might not know about contracting legal professionals.

Legal Outsourcing Originated from a Global Depression

As you may know, a lot of large-scale companies and hundreds of thousands of individuals went bankrupt during the 2008 global recession. Law firms were flooded with work. A peculiar situation emerged when the firms could not handle all the workflow and could not afford expenses related to hiring additional staff.

To get out of the situation, law firms decided to outsource law-related services. This practice proved to be successful with budget-friendly solutions and time-saving. Once the legal industry realized the real benefits of outsourcing, it became a guiding trend in the business with the promise for better expansion.

Legal Process Outsourcing Taking Technological Shape

Since its interception, outsourcing has taken many different shapes from contracting to legal process outsourcing (LPO). The legal world is fully aware of the buzzwords like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and natural language processing. What could take months to process, the machines now do in a few minutes, from spotting relevant words and phrases to discerning chains of events. Machines work 24/7 saving a lot of time and costs. It is unbelievable what they can do in the same amount of time spent by humans. Not only lawyers can accomplish more in a given time, but they can also organize resources most efficiently. LPO is not a new concept, but it is not yet widely spread throughout the world.

According to Grand View Research, “LPO providers are leveraging their knowledge gained in business processes and information technology markets for creating metrics that assess the quality of work being provided. The growing adoption of these metrics is facilitating the development of service level agreements that maintain a precise standard of quality of legal process outsourcing. For developing an effective LPO strategy, the corporate legal department must focus on understanding the business model promoted by the LPO industry.”

Legal Process Outsourcing Promises Double-Digit Annual Growth

According to Technavio, “the global legal process outsourcing (LPO) services market size is anticipated to grow rapidly and post a CAGR of close to 29% during the forecast period. The proliferation of risk management practices will drive the global LPO services market growth until the end of 2021.”

The report says that the LPO industry may grow to $8.71 bn by 2021 with a yearly average of 29%. Some 26% of the LPO market accounted for CMO segment, e-discovery and litigation support account for 25.51% and 12.55% in 2016.

Not Only a Reduction in Operating Costs

Outsourcing may do more than the reduction in operating costs that a lot of firms have become fully aware of.

LPO companies work around the clock. If your outsourcer works in India, your work will be fully taken care of when you wake up in the USA.

You will have better access to new talent. Contract lawyers are normally specialized in specific practice areas, and you gain access to an additional pool of talents when outsourcing.

Finally, your team can focus on core tasks gaining more clients and accomplishing tasks more efficiently.

Law-Related Applications Come to Help

The market is full of law-related applications that save you time and money. There are thousands of law-related mobile applications to improve the traditional modes of legal practice, among them NotaryCam, illegal Legislation, AppearMe and more.

The latter is a web and mobile app to find appearance attorneys. It is one of the recent technological tools that allows locating a contract attorney in less than a minute. This is a revolutionary approach in the market. AppearMe is a startup among many others that have disrupted the traditional models of doing business.