Legal Process Outsourcing industry is increasing tremendously and is contributing to the major chunk of outsourcing field. Besides this, it has provided jobs to a thousand of law graduates who might have struggled hard to earn their daily livings. Especially, those with a poor background and working women, who find it difficult to go into litigation field, have accepted this field happily. Further, this industry has not only offered an earning to a law graduate but has harnessed the inter-communication skills and has added to the knowledge of laws and procedures of foreign countries like the UK, USA etc for whom these associates work.

Most often it gives a feel to an entrepreneur that starting an LPO is an easy task but it’s mostly not just an office, some staff, website, and skills but much more, thus most of the startups end up wasting their time money energy and ultimately wind up the business

This industry is not very new to India but has almost crossed a decade and though some feel that it is at its youth stage some LPOs have marked their presence and have performed really well and others have closed down their businesses. Western countries have always looked at Indian services in outsourcing to avoid heavy expenses and thus LPO industry is expanding continuously.

The above-mentioned fact pushes the start-ups to enter into this field most often not knowing what exactly is needed to succeed in this industry, all the think is to start somehow so that ultimately they will anyhow get the results, but the sad reality says otherwise. Such industrial houses with this perception face more loss than making any good out of these attempts.

Perhaps, the most common mistaken belief they all have is about the requirements to succeed in the LPO industry, which they think as having an office, with their own website, with a set of legal graduates, some amount of infrastructure, broadband connection and the required contract with a foreign country. They all fail to realise that having these things is not a herculean task and many lawyers, firms, institutions can easily gather these things mentioned above which can encourage them to start providing service in legal processes outsourcing to another country. Nonetheless, that’s not very true, and that’s not enough because apart from these very basic requirements, what they need is enabling and inspiring the western attorneys, law firms, corporate counsels etc to start thinking about shifting their work to a country like India, more specifically to your firm.

 The important requirements for a start-up to succeed are:

1. In addition to the Indian management, they require lawyers from the UK, US etc.
2. Indian staff must be equally qualified.
3. A well-planed training of the staff before assigning them any work.
4. Periodical supervision of the Indian work by the western attorneys or specialized staff.

1. In addition to the Indian management, they require lawyers from the UK, US etc.

                The answer as to why there is a need to include foreign attorney into the management is that there is a need of an additional assurance and some extra level of comfort to attract the client base from abroad. Therefore, it evident that the western attorney would be better qualified to give that additional support required to provide that level of assurance and comfort.  What can make a successful LPO is that their show of seriousness also, which can be guaranteed by taking on board such western attorney, in addition to this they are better placed to understand the need and procedures that is pertinent to gain the confidence of these foreign firms assigning the work of legal process outsourcing (LPO).

2. Indian staff must be equally qualified.

Right from the mere survival, its success, may be the failure of the LPO, the staff of LPO plays very important role. It becomes crucial to employ world class staff and management with a top class infrastructure for smooth operations of an LPO. A staff competent to produce qualitative results can bring success to the LPO. It can also be held responsible for LPOs success and failure. Taking a qualitative staff becomes a tough task when there are 80,000 law graduates every year passing out of around law colleges, which range from ordinary to super intelligent. Further as a fact this profession is chosen as the last option left if we can see the history of the profession thought the profession is very old and prestigious. Nonetheless, now the quality is improving with the emergence of National Law Schools. Hence there is needed to look at such colleges for recruitment of the staff. To add to the pain of recruitment LPOs have generally seen job application from graduates who have weak English in their inter-personal communication or the graduates approaching LPOs are those who have not been recruited anywhere else.  This being the reality western countries that take these services are very particular about English grammar and use of language as they need everything in precise. Therefore, staff can bring down an LPO at rapid speed if it is not meeting the required criteria.

3. A well-planed training of the staff before assigning them any work.

Most of the times a well planned in-house training can generate and polish the quality of the staff. Western clients are of shrewd nature, they demand high-quality staff, and they ask questions to the staff before hiring the service provider or make decisions of hiring based on the quality of the staff. Before assigning the work most of the times they make specific enquiring related to the staff as to their profile, law schools and colleges they graduated from, the process through which they are hired, or they even send their own exerts and specialists to meet the staff before hand to make informed decisions. The level of infrastructure does not matter when the staff is not good, and won’t generate work and in turn, no westerners will assign their work to you. Thus training the staff to polish their qualities to suit the job requirements is crucial.

4. Periodical supervision of the Indian work by the western attorneys or specialised staff.
   As said above western clients would be very particular about the staff quality and the quality of work thus they are on a constant vigilance and for the reason, there has to be a western attorney on board who can supervise the work. The ratio of 10:01 can be said to be ideal for Indian and western management for successful business. The supervision gets crucial because of the quality of work needed and no compromise formula of it. Most of the time we find western lawyers and attorneys giving up jobs which pay them well and relocate to India to become the part of this revolution. This signifies the importance levelled for supervising job done by them. The job needs to be done under the supervision of four eyes, even best attorneys tend to commit serious mistakes, thus it becomes important to check and recheck the work done under the guidance of a western attorney to improve its quality before sending it to the clients.

Some other concerns:

1. Even the most qualified law graduates think this to be a low-profile job; they prefer opting low packages in other fields than to work for LPOs.
2. It is said that LPOs have its limits beyond which there are no promotions and there is no growth, area of concern
3. While recruiting, it is difficult to weed out the possibility of having a staff which is of low quality particularly those who have tendencies of taking leaves for small causes or watch YouTube channel, browse social networks, chatting on messengers and so on.
4. Staff usually has issues with earnings, promotions, working hours, bonuses, perks, pickup and drop down facilities etc.
5. Indian law graduates are not familiar with the western legal system and take time in learning it.
6. One of the big issues is to match the western timings; applicants do not generally accept the western timings of work which stretch up to midnight or early mornings.
7. A regular desktop job is not preferable when a law graduate has learned law to be into the courts of law or on the field arguing and settling his cases.

Nonetheless, the industry is at boom, many qualified law graduates are coming forward as the job offers huge money soon after completing the graduation which is difficult in the law field. Specially, women are finding the job much better than the litigation work along with the payment there is security and pick up, drop down a facility and the overall care taken at the office. If the above-mentioned concerns are addressed properly by a business entity, then a start-up can very well succeed in this field.