About Promantra LPO
The legal industry dynamics has changed across the globe and outsourcing of legal work is considered crucial for gaining efficiency and staying profitable by majority of US and European Attorneys / Law Firms, including the Legal 500 Firms. Today outsourcing of legal work to India is considered as an integral to the firm’s legal service core competencies that help in reducing their business cost and increase overall efficiency.
PromantraLPO is a premium legal process service provider and we stand committed to deliver high quality legal solutions to serve our varied clients worldwide. ProLegal can be your process partner which would benefit you with high quality legal and paralegal support, litigation support, legal transcription, contract drafting and discovery / document review work.
Myths & Facts
The law firms in United States alone outsource more than $8 billion in legal research and litigation support every year. However, surprisingly many law firms shun legal outsourcing due to the myths associated with it. We take a closer look to these myths in order to dispel these myths and understand how outsourcing your legal work can be a sound solution for your firm.
Ethics and Privileges
The threshold of attorney supervision for LPO Projects highlights the tension between law as a business and law as a profession. Giving the way to the “Law as Work Product” the ethical questions raised by outsourcing of legal work offshore are more concerned with risk management and conflict of interest rather than a “noble calling” of the “profession of law”. The Committee on Professional and Judicial Ethics of New York City Bar issued an opinion.
The Ethical Question of Outsourcing Legal Work by United States Attorneys
Various Bar Associations in United States have issued opinions addressing ethical concerns where a law firm outsources legal work on behalf of a client. It is quite evident that under the hypothetical presented, the attorneys or the law firm in the U.S. would not be aiding the unauthorized practice of law or violates its ethical duty of competence.
As per the Formal Opinion 2006-3 issued by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York Committee on Professional and Judicial Ethics in August 2006
“A lawyer may ethically outsource legal support services overseas to a non-lawyer if the lawyer (a) rigorously supervises the non-lawyer, so as to avoid aiding the non-lawyer in the unauthorized practice of law and to ensure that the non-lawyer’s work contributes to the lawyer’s competent representation of the client; (b) preserves the client’s confidences and secrets when outsourcing; (c) under the circumstances described in this Opinion, avoids conflicts of interest when outsourcing; (d) bills for outsourcing appropriately; and (e) under the circumstances described in this Opinion, obtains the client’s informed advance consent to outsourcing.”
An opinion with regard to ethical concerns about a law firm outsourcing legal work on behalf of a client has been issued by the San Diego County Bar Association in its Ethics Opinion 2007-1:
“The Committee concludes that outsourcing does not dilute the attorney’s professional responsibilities to his client, but may result in unique applications in the way those responsibilities are discharged. Under the hypothetical as we have framed it, the California attorneys may satisfy their obligations to their client in the manner in which they used Legalworks, but only if they have sufficient knowledge to supervise the outsourced work properly and they make sure the outsourcing does not compromise their other duties to their clients. However, they would not satisfy their obligations to their clients unless they informed the client of Legalworks' anticipated involvement at the time they decided to use the firm to the extent stated in this hypothetical.”
The similar view taken by the Los Angeles Bar Association says that “We conclude that such arrangements may be ethically permissible, with some limitations depending on the specific terms and conditions of the arrangement, and provided that the attorney complies with several ethical requirements. Specifically, the Committee is of the opinion that the attorney may ethically enter into the arrangement with Company provided that the attorney at all times retains and exercises independent professional judgment in connection with the performance of the attorney’s legal services for the client. The attorney must sign the brief and in doing so adopts the work and is ultimately responsible for the accuracy of brief to both the court and to the client.
Best Practices
Because we feel responsible for ensuring that law firms operate smoothly and towards maximizing their profitability, it is our concern to deliver quality work products to our clients. In an outsourcing arrangement, the outsourcing company and law firm share key benefits. We intently strive to evolve and adopt best possible solutions for our clients that would ensure smooth process transition.
The legal regime of Attorney-Clients confidentiality is to be considered as of foremost concern. This is because reaching the US legal market would be difficult if one was unconcerned of this factor. These are essential if we are to inspire confidence in our LPO clients and ensure a service of the highest standard. We have to appreciate that there are valid and serious concerns regarding the issues of the off shoring legal process, namely confidentiality and the unauthorized practice of law. We are also countering reservations over whether non US qualified attorneys could possess the requisite knowledge to work on US related legal matters. We have no qualms that it is not only the exhaustive safeguards that a reputable Legal Process Outsourcing company (LPO) has to have in place to ensure that client confidentiality remains of the utmost importance, confidence of US or UK client would also count on details with regard to the recruitment process, training programs, and educational qualifications required of Indian attorneys by established LPO, or it is a type of amateur operation executing legal operation.
The client has to be comfortable and in order to reach out to these concerns, it is required that PromantraLPO has to have:
- An on-shore physical US or UK presence is mandatory – it is not sufficient to simply have a PO Box mailing address!
- Full time qualified US (or UK if a registered UK company) attorney presence on-shore is mandatory
The foremost concern is to reach the set industry standards and approved quality mark recognizable to our clients together with agreement on the timeframe. Risk allocation is one of the major sticking points in most outsourcing and services deals.
Much of the monitoring of an outsourcing deal is based on specific metrics. There are good reasons for this approach, after all, metrics are hard numbers and are relatively easy to measure. But are metrics everything? In recent years, it seems as if corporate decision making has become increasingly risk driven. Compliance requirements are seen as a key driver - because of some of the corporate excesses of the recent past, complex regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley have unquestionably increased the difficulty of addressing compliance issues.
Complimenting our Outsourcing Services, we adopt following as our Services Best Practice:
- We make quality customer service our highest priority
- We do not sell outsourcing services as loss-leaders with the expectation of making it up later
- We accept responsibility for all our actions when performing the services
- We resist the urge to over discount
- We listen to our customers for ways by which we can improve our services
- We manage our outsourcing deals to optimize customer service, not short-term revenue
- We take real measures to reduce turnover and keep our workforce happy and interested in the work
