Since Sept. this year, legal process outsourcing (LPO) players, particularly the Indian providers, expected a spurt in outsourcing contracts as the American Bar Association (ABA) had given clearance to the U.S. and the other Western countries for offshoring legal or non-legal work to save the time and cost. Also, the companies filing for bankruptcies had also given rise to a lot of work that could be offshored.

However, the challenge now is the lack of talent faced by the industry. A study by ValueNotes clearly shows that new law graduates are not much aware about LPOs and even amongst those who are, only 5 percent consider it as the first career option and 7 percent as the second career option.

 Career Options - Ranking

Source: ValueNotes

In India, there are over 700 colleges producing around 80,000 law graduates, out of which only 10,000 go into LPOs, though this number is expected to grow by five times in 2012. However, it might be a difficult to attract top students because nearly half of the law graduates surveyed think that the work at the LPOs is just average. The LPO industry is going through the same phase that the BPO companies went through when people thought that only low-end work is outsourced. Moreover, the mindset of the law students is absolutely different compared to regular graduates as law is a professional degree. The survey reveals that very few students find LPO work as glamorous, and more are interested in litigation or corporate law or international law firms where money is as good but the quality of work is better. This is true to a certain extent as mostly drafting work is offshored while the brief, the primary legal input by the lawyer, is already provided. Usually in most of the legal offices interns are given the drafting work. So in order to attract law graduates to join LPOs, the industry will have to come up with ways other than just offering high salary packages.

Opinion About the Kind of Work at an LPO

Source: ValueNotes