Legal Process outsourcing (LPO) provides a wide array of legal support services. The LPO market has expanded significantly over the last decade to include in its ambit different service lines ranging from document review to compliance, research and contract management. LPO, after undergoing different phases of development, has now moved to the next phase. Arguably, LPO business has undergone an archetypical shift from the previous generation to the next generation. This will aid in focusing on elimination of all the challenges faced by the previous generations and pave way to success in commercial terms.
LPO 1.0 (“first wave”) was the initial stage for the industry and focused on labor arbitrage for services. LPO 2.0 (“second wave”) noticed the growth from smaller to bigger LPOs and it focused on maturity of legal support services delivery models. The LPO 3.0 (“next generation”) is considered as the “third wave” LPO. The third wave LPO is about provision of integrated legal support solutions with the combination of legal and IT knowledge. Enhancement of the conventional practices can be achieved through LPO 3.0.
While stepping into the next stage of its maturity, LPO will follow the established principles of lean management and inculcate the integrated service delivery model for its occupation. The trend will be towards achieving right balance between innovation, profitability, and project focus and client satisfaction. The low-end, middle-end and high- end work as carried on by the LPO entities will no longer be confined to providing high quality and cost-effective services but will be leveraged to bring inherent scalability to the organizations to meet the crests and troughs of intense demands.
The next generation LPOs will focus on enhancing their project-centric models to organization-centric models which will facilitate in building around an industry expertise rather than sole service expertise. In future, LPO will adopt a new definition and LPO 3.0 will prove its worth to be a dynamic domain of law.
