Market Insights
The third-party services industry is growing rapidly, with organizations recognising the perks of outsourcing sets of activities that are not part of their core business. Legal process outsourcing (LPO) is a practice wherein a company, organization, or law firm procures legal services from an external service provider. LPO involves outsourcing numerous legal services, such as bookkeeping and billing, contract management, general litigation support services, legal research, and legal transcription, among others. Adoption of LPO services enables the completion of time-consuming legal work with high efficiency and reduced costs. Outsourcing legal processes can help companies save more than 50% of the total costs required for in-house legal processes. As a result, the LPO market is set to demonstrate robust growth over the forecast period.
With the constant rise of the service industry, outsourcing services have demonstrated immense growth over the course of time. Rising legal costs have made corporations more likely to outsource certain legal practices in order to reduce overall costs. For instance, in 2009, Rio Tinto plc, a global mining firm, awarded a contract to India-based LPO provider CPA Global for conducting its legal processes. Rio Tinto plc saved US$ 8 million per year as a result of this contract, which accounts for nearly one-fifth of the company’s legal costs. With a growing offshore LPO services sector, the demand for legal process outsourcing is bound to remain strong over the forecast period. Offshore outsourcing accounted for the largest share of the overall LPO market. Advancing communication technology has enabled higher-value legal work as well as legal support services to be outsourced offshore, making it the most prominent segment. On the other hand, a significant number of companies employ onshore resources to ensure a more accurate solution, facilitating deep customer understanding.
India is leading the LPO market, as it is the most common location for LPO service providers. Most LPO providers reduce the cost for their clients by locating their human resources in countries such as India, the Philippines, and China, among others, that have cheaper resources. Significant revenue shares of offshore LPO in India, the Philippines, and China are generated by companies based in North America and Europe. Increasing preeminence in the provision of legal services is expected to escalate the demand for LPO services in the Asia-Pacific region over the following years. On the other hand, U.S. and U.K.-based clients also demand onshore outsourcing for a deep understanding of processes, thereby driving the demand for the onshore LPO market.
The global legal process outsourcing (LPO) market is segmented on the following basis:
Location:
- Offshore
- Onshore
- Engagement Model
- On-demand Services
- End-to-end Services
Services:
- Contract Management
- Compliance Assistance
- E-discovery
- Litigation Support
- Patent Support
- Others (Legal Research, Intellectual Property Services, Bookkeeping & Billing, etc.)
Geography:
- North America
- Europe
- Germany
- France
- Italy
- U.K.
- Russia
- Rest of Europe
- Asia-Pacific
- India
- China
- Japan
- Rest of Asia-Pacific
- Latin America
- Brazil
- Mexico
- Rest of Latin America
- Middle East and Africa
- GCC Countries
- South Africa
- Rest of Middle East and Africa
Key players identified in the global legal process outsourcing (LPO) market include but are not limited to:
Integreon, Inc., UnitedLex Corporation, Elevate Services, Inc., Pangea3 LLC, Axiom Global, Bodhi Global Solutions, Morae Global Corporation, Cobra Legal Solutions LLC, CPA Global, Mindcrest, Inc., QuisLex, Inc., and others
