The legal process outsourcing (LPO) industry is one such segment that has seen tremendous growth in terms of technology from its inception. Technology is now a focal point in almost every facet of LPO services, from being an enabler of services to monitoring workflow. It offers service providers the opportunity to widen their scope of offerings.

Technology’s greatest impact on LPO services is through its ability to facilitate easier and more thorough delivery of their services. Legal services such as contract management or litigation support make use of software platforms for a variety of reasons. With document review specifically, having to sift through thousands of documents manually would take up too much lawyer time. With a software platform, documents can be scanned fairly quickly to determine which of them might be relevant to the litigation suit the client is involved in. This automation of high volume work increases the time lawyers can spend on other tasks for the client. Having a single platform for managing multiple client contracts can drastically can make the task of abstraction or redlining easier for employees. Platforms used for such services are generally sourced from third party software vendors. A small percentage of LPOs have also developed proprietary platforms that are available for their clients should they choose. As these platforms continue to evolve ever so rapidly, the automation of lower value work will increase thereby leaving lawyers with the opportunity to tackle medium to high value services.  

The inclusion of workflow management and data security, two elements where technology once again rears its head, are not limited to the LPO space. These tools are commonly used across businesses and services. How LPOs differentiate themselves in this segment however, is the manner by which they are able to integrate these industry generic tools into their existing LPO specific software platforms. This is primarily to streamline and make their processes more efficient and cost effective.

Within LPO service offerings, technology is used for workflow management. Various LPOs have different work flows tools ranging from tracking attendance of employees to something as advanced as monitoring employee productivity. For example, for clients that are being billed by the hour, there are software tools in the market that enable LPOs to monitor exactly how many hours an employee spends on a particular project or task. This makes billing the client easier by ensuring that the number of hours required by the client has been fulfilled and being able to offer the client cost predictability from the start of the project. Managers also use tools to keep themselves updated on the status of projects being worked on to ensure deadlines are met. These tools, much like software platforms, can yet again be sourced from third party vendors, provided by the client or developed in-house at times based on client requirements.

Technology also plays a huge role with respect to data security. With the constant upload of documents, often in the hundreds of thousands, maintaining the confidentiality and ensuring safe storage of these documents becomes a key concern for clients. Technology from the side of the LPO ensures this information is stored on secure servers with the ability by either party to access any or all files at any given point in time using encrypted passwords. With a constant reliance for client files for the completion of work LPOs also have dedicated bandwidth to ensure smooth uploads and downloads by their employees.

The points above serve as testament to the fact that technology is an important asset across levels in LPO services. Going forward, technology tools will help broaden the range of services offered. Healthy competition amongst software vendors to remain market leaders will also benefit clients by giving them greater flexibility and variety when choosing software platforms.

The opportunity costs for parties involved in this technological progression should not be overlooked. With LPOs having their pick of cutting edge platforms, costs will continue to decrease while the efficiency and speed by which they are able to deliver legal services globally will increase. This in turn will put added pressure on software developers to keep themselves updated on the requirements of buyers to remain competitive. IT/BPO players, the true technology giants, should have an advantage by being able to churn out highly sophisticated home-grown software that can be used internally and licensed for external use as well.

Vineet Ramachandran is Analyst at ValueNotes Sourcing Practice