Mysore, a city of about one million people, has not quite been in the limelight despite being about 80 miles from Bangalore, the world’s latest IT capital. Infosys Technologies has a training center in Mysore, and a few small software units have their development centers there. People go there to retire, enjoy the clean air, fine arts and palaces. Lot of foreign tourists also head there to relax and learn yoga. One such tourist, Russell Smith, came to the city from New York, to practice Ashtanga (eight limbs) yoga under K. Pattabhi Jois. The yoga guru has two million followers, many of them in New York. After several visits to the city, Smith began to notice the talented people and the low cost of doing business there. And in April 2006 he launched a Legal Process Offshoring (LPO) company, Smith Dornan Dehn (SDD) Global Solutions in Mysore.
The decision was well evaluated. And in the process, Smith brought to the city some of the biggest global names in media and entertainment, to do their legal back-office work. SDD handles some of the most high-profile entertainment and media litigations for its U.S.-based clients, and also processes visas for actors, producers and other U.S.-based professionals. Its team of 40, including lawyers, is doing legal research for Al Pacino’s next film. And litigation concerning the comedy blockbuster Borat, is also being handled here.
Its clients include HBO, Sony Pictures Television, Universal Pictures, MTV Networks, Channel Four TV, 20th Century Fox and former President Bill Clinton’s organization, the Clinton Foundation. SDD is a New York-headquartered law firm with over 100 clients. SDD Global Solutions is the Mysore arm of the company with U.S. licensed attorneys working for them in New York.
LPO Landscape
SDD is only one such company servicing the legal needs of American corporates. Other LPO providers in places like India, Philippines or Eastern Europe service not just the corporates but also law firms.
Law firms offshoring work to providers around the world often see the back office as a place where they can wire out some routine clerical tasks. Be it basic research, preparing notes, filing patents, doing paperwork for clients, transcribing records or just doing the task that they would rather not waste their own time on. There’s always a law firm in a low-cost country willing to do that for a fraction of the cost. That might still be true, but it’s not very often the “case” that an established offshore law firm would like to handle for an American, European or any other client based in a high-cost location. Not surprisingly, providers providing legal support to global law firms have graduated to more complex legal work.
Given that legal services is a $250 billion business annually, it’s not surprising that providers are gearing up with requisite skills to meet the demand to deliver complex work. In fact Forrester also predicts that by 2015 over 450,000 U.S. lawyer jobs, nearly 8 percent of the field, will shift abroad.
LPO is projected to be the second fastest growing segment of the global business process offshoring industry, estimated to increase dramatically from about $80 million in 2006 to approximately $4 billion by 2010, according to another report. Employment in LPO is also projected to grow to 32,000 next year, 40,000 by 2010, and 82,000 by 2015.
