Indian lawyers need to pull up their socks. Legal process outsourcing (LPO) firms need them more than anytime before. Recent months have seen a significant increase in the demand of lawyers by these outsourcing firms in India, courtesy increased legal work from foreign clients and the restructuring of their offered services. LPOs like CPA Global, Pangea 3, Unitedlex, Infosys LPO arm are looking at almost doubling their headcount in the next 12 months.
Industry data reveals that the $440 million Indian LPO industry will see an upward swing after 2010 in terms of employee strength. The industry has by far been experiencing a flat growth in employee increase because of low end work being done from India. Moreover, law firms refrained from outsourcing their confidential work to vendors based in India.
Take the case for CPA Global, an LPO firm which has an India based headcount of 800, total employees being 1500 across all countries. ?We will hire 400 lawyers in India by the end of this year. Our global headcount will be 7500 in five years. We expect 75% of it to be in India,? says Anand Sharma, CFO and head, management services at CPA Global. The company?s 40% hiring would constitute laterals with 12-15 years experience and the remaining 60% would be freshers. Sharma elaborates that presently CPA does three-fourth of its business in intellectual property and another one- fourth is litigation, contract management, legal research. ?We want to have a ratio of 50: 50 by 2013-end. Thus, we are concentrating only on hiring lawyers . Presently the company has 1/3 rd lawyers out of 800,? he adds.
Pangea3, for instance, plans to double its headcount from the current 550 lawyers over the next 12 months. The company has an additional 100 people in IT support, HR, administration etc. ?LPOs give lawyers an international platform to learn the best practices in their field which may not be possible when working with a law firm,? says Sanjay Kamlani, co-founder and co-CEO of legal outsourcing firm Pangea3. He shares that 50% of the law graduates in India prefer a job in LPOs against law firms.
Same is the case with LPO firm Unitedlex, which employs 450 people here. The firm plans to double its size by 2011 and will hire the manpower needed accordingly. The HR head at the company elaborates that Indian lawyers need training ranging from three weeks to three months to be employable.
Infosys BPO, CEO and MD Swaminathan Dandapani recalls that Infosys started its LPO segment two years back and today has a strong team of 500 employees.?I will not be surprised if we add 150-200 lawyers in another 12 months. We see a huge opportunity to work with law firms and are focusing on core verticals like finance and accounting and HR outsourcing,?he highlights.
Throwing light on the industry trends, Vipul Khanna, practice head, BPO and KPO, Cognizant, comments, ?We are largely focused on corporate legal and compliance processes in the LPO space. The activities have evolved from review of legal contracts and maintenance of contract databases, to contract negotiation and contract management.? The economic conditions of the past two years and, more importantly, the continual and significant changes in regulations have precipitated a big change in how clients are thinking about this area, including working with partners, and making strategic IT investment in legal, compliance, governance, and risk areas.
Jui Narendran, head of ValueNotes Sourcing Practice feels that another reason for sudden concentration on increasing headcount could be business acquisitions. ? There is an upward trend in terms of business acquisitions that are likely to be seen in the industry. This is the reason why we anticipate hiring to increase. It is now a proved fact that Indian lawyers are proficient enough to cater to the US and UK markets,? she concludes.
