At LPOs, a tryst with legalese for non-law grads too

Priyanka Golikeri
Mumbai
While his peers from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi slug it out at various information technology and manufacturing firms, Ritesh Desai (not his real name) earns a living reviewing patents filed by companies.
The IT engineer chose to test his mettle in the intellectual property (IP) section of a legal process outsourcing (LPO) unit in Mumbai. He wanted to do something different, and the high-growth segment was lucrative enough.
Besides, the job of an associate with a pay package of about Rs 5 lakh per year wasn't a bad deal to start out with.
Of IP per se, Desai knew little in the beginning. But after a month-long training provided by his company, he was at ease with the legalese.
One would have thought only law graduates made it to LPOs.
It turns out that non-law graduates, too, have headroom here.
Depending on merit, pay packets in an LPO job can skyrocket, says Desai. From Rs 5 lakh a year, the packet could touch as much as Rs 16-18 lakh per annum in say five years.
Going by Sanjay Kamlani, co-CEO of LPO firm Pangea3, the business in India may be galloping at a whopping 50-100% a year. "Firms in the US are learning about the benefits and savings on account of outsourcing to India."
ValueNotes Research, a business intelligence company, predicts LPO revenues will touch $440 million by 2010, up from an estimated $370 million for 2009.
Kamlani says all that growth is due largely to cost savings.
By outsourcing work such as review of electronic documents for evidence, compliance, review of contracts, patent applications and due diligence related to mergers and acquisitions to LPOs, as opposed to law firms, corporates can save as much as 90% on costs.
The billing rates make all the difference. Going by experts, the average billing rate levied by LPOs is between $20 and $70 per hour, as against an exorbitant $400-600 per hour charged by law firms.
Rohan Dalal, managing director of LPO firm MindCrest (India), sees demand swelling in the year ahead, especially from the second half of 2010, as buyers of LPO services seek sustainable long-term contracts of 3-5 years with LPOs in India.
"We will thus look at hiring 200-300 people by end of 2010. We at present have 600 employees. Other than plain law grads, we would look at people with backgrounds in engineering, financial services, banking, etc," says Dalal.
Kamlani dittoes: "More growth means more manpower needs and an increase in hiring numbers." According to him, Pangea3 would hike its employee numbers by about 300 from the current 350 in the next 12 months. The company would hire graduates from towns such as Jodhpur, Bhopal and Chandigarh as well from bigger cities such as Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and New Delhi.
Vijay Srivastava, vice-president - human resources, UnitedLex BPO says his company will hire close to 200 people for the LPO business in the 2010-11 fiscal. "We would recruit law grads, and people from engineering, life sciences backgrounds as well, to work on IP."
"We would also scout places like Lucknow, Allahabad, Agra, Aligarh and Benaras for talent, apart from the law schools and engineering colleges in the metros," says Srivastava.
Not for nothing does ValueNotes see the LPO employment numbers at a respectable 15,400 by end-2010.