LPO Industry Overview

The birth of the LPO industry was predictible since every process is today's busnisses has been outsourced to one extent or another.

From manufacturing to call centers, to medical processes, to accounting and financial work, no repetitive work that can take advantage of advances in telecommunications has been spared from the outsourcing trend that has swept entire industries. This outsourcing has caused a transformation in many such industries, leading to cost efficiencies, but also to a real and or prerceived drop in quality. Many jobs in the "first world" were also lost to third world countries.

There is nothing special, per se, in the legal industry to make it immune from this global trend. Of course, lawyers tend to be more conservative, more protective of their turf, but the economic realities of Globalization, and the shareholders insatiable appetite for cost savings and ever increasing bottom line were not going to spare any line item on the right side of the corporate balance sheets.

The pioneers of the LPO industry started in 2001, following the .com bubble burst, and the cost saving imperative that followed. But the industry lingered and was vastly unheard of in legal circles until the economic crisis that started in 2007 and continues today. Like the .com bubble burst that served as the springboard to the ITO and BPO industries, the current recession is springboarding the LPO industry.

The only surprising fact behind the industry's evolution is the lack of resistance it has faced from the various bar organizations who tended to espouse it instead of resisting it. There have also been precious few challenges from the courts to discovery work performed in India, the Philippines and elsewhere.