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Times never bad for lawyers
The Financial Chronicle
November 2008
There’s no doubting the fact that lawyers are always in demand, in good times or bad, a recent case in point being the US sub-prime credit crisis and global meltdown which seems to have only increased demand for Legal process Outsourcing (LPO) firms. Even as the rest of the industry is on a retrenchment drive, several top Indian companies have hired hundreds of lawyers to satiate industry demand.
According to estimates, India LPOs revenue is growing at 40 percent annually, and is all set to claim a large chunk of the estimated $4.7 billion global legal market by 2010.
LPO honchos say demand is high as there are mountains of pending cases as many companies, shareholders and individuals have filed court cases against bankrupt companies. Legal services offshoring includes wide range of services like legal transcription, document review, litigation support, legal research, Intellectual Property, contracts drafting, patent application drafting, patent analytics, corporate due diligence, secretarial and legal publishing services.
“With the increase of legal work from the US, we will be hiring more than 500 lawyers in batches within six months to immediately start work for our clients,” Rohan Dalal, managing director, Mindcrest India said, Mindcrest is one of the first LPO firms in India, which began operations six years ago with five lawyers in Mumbai.
At present, it has 50 lawyers at its office in Mumbai and 450 in Pune. Mindcrest is listed as among the top 10 LPOs in the 2008 Black Book of Outsourcing published in the US.
Another two-year old LPO firm Bodhi Global, which began operations with a handful of lawyers is adding 100 lawyers to its existing battery of 30 lawyers, by March 2009.
“Ninety per cent of our LPO work is for our clients in the US, the rest is UK specific,” said Arihant Patni, CEO, Bodhi Global.
IT major Infosys is also ramping up its LPO operations by adding over 70 lawyers at its Bangalore campus by December end.
“We are expanding with more projects coming in our hands from overseas and we will recruit in excess of 70 staff for Bangalore,” Poonam Vasudeva, operation head, Infosys LPO Pune campus, said.
