Introduction

While the outsourcing of IT and ITES services to various cost-effective countries has been continuing since the past 15 years, the off-shoring of legal services is still in its initial stages.

Offshoring is a special subset of outsourcing, where the work is sent outside the U.S. The work is usually sent to a country which has a fleet of qualified professionals with good English language skills and relatively lower wages.

Consequently, Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO), a niche segment within the Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) category, is thriving profusely. And within the LPO industry, it is patent outsourcing, which is catching up faster than the rest of LPO jobs.

Presently, many US law firms have internal legal departments comprising of lawyers, associates, and paralegal staff. However, many smaller and even most of the larger firms do not have these departments for various reasons such as cost, efficiency, quality etc. For such firms, outsourcing their legal work makes good business sense.

Why Outsource Legal and Paralegal Services ?

Of course, the reduced labor costs, and therefore, the increased profit margins for the end-clients, are the most compelling reasons for these clients to offshore legal services to low-wage countries such as India. Besides this factor, there are some other important reasons why many organizations large, medium and small – offshore some of the work:

• Improving Quality: Due to the substantially lower labor costs in the outsourced destinations, legal professionals can take substantially more time in doing a unit of work, thereby, making the additional end deliverable more robust and complete. Since this deliverable is then reviewed by a US attorney, it is likely to have a superior quality.
  
  
• Reducing Response Time: Offshoring also enables organizations to take advantages of multiple shifts and time zone advantages, which is especially important for contracts, legal research, electronic document management, document discovery, and in situations with strict deadlines.
  
  
• Lawyers And Paralegals Can Move Up The Value Chain: Since the work done by external legal professionals is the same as that provided by a US associate with 2-3 years experience, US lawyers can move up the value-chain and provide a broader array of services to their clients.
  
  
• Ability To Send Overflow Work: Many law firms have either too much work or not enough work. Since they cannot afford to keep a large workforce on their payrolls, they face great difficulties hardship when they get a large project that needs to be completed in a short period of time. Such firms usually benefit a great deal by sending overflow work to offshore providers.
  
  
• Extending Venture Capital Money: For most startups, the ‘cost of money’ is the highest in the initial stage, which is also the time when they need to patent their technology. Hence, the offshoring of patent applications by startups and their corresponding funding partners will allow the VC dollars to have more of an impact.
  
  
• Reducing The Law-Associate Churn: Law-associates’ churn occurs when junior lawyers switch from one law firm to another or when they open their own law firm. Offshoring of various legal and paralegal processes can help in lowering this churn because the firm would require fewer junior lawyers. The company’s energies can then be focused externally, on services such as client development.
  

What Legal and Paralegal Services Can Be Outsourced

There are a large number of legal and paralegal services that can be outsourced. A few important ones are:

• Electronic Document Management Services such as legal transcription, legal coding, data digitization etc
  
  
• Research Services such as statutory and case law research services, by making use of electronic databases.
  
  
• Due Diligence Services such as checking of company books, board resolutions and shareholder resolutions for the purpose of mergers and acquisitions.
  
  
• Contract Drafting and Proof Reading of Contracts such as employee contracts, non-disclosure agreements, licensing agreements, supplier agreements, lease agreements, vendor agreements, and distributor agreements
  
  
• Document Discovery in Litigation which is a tedious, time consuming process that is essential in most litigation cases.

• Intellectual Property Services that include patent application drafting, prior art searching, patent proof reading, docketing, patent landscaping and patent valuation.
  

Overview of Patent Outsourcing

Patent outsourcing includes technical research, proof reading, prior art search, drafting patent application, patent amendments among others. This includes a huge amount of research for patents being filed in US courts.

In a typical arrangement the portions of a patent application that describe how to make and use an invention (known as the specification and drawings) are prepared by either an offshore technical professional or a foreign patent attorney/agent.

The offshore professional will also draft claims to indicate what he or she believes are the pertinent inventive features. The application is then sent to a U.S. patent attorney to edit/review the specification and the claims thus making changes if any required.

The application is then submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The U.S. patent attorney is also usually responsible for prosecuting the application in the USPTO until the patent issues.

Price may not be the only reason for outsourcing. Both in-house and law firm patent attorneys have sizeable workloads. Outsourcing may also free up the inadequate in-house resources.

Benefits Of Outsourcing To India

• Large Wage Differentials
• Highly Qualified Work Force
• Common Law Jurisdiction
• English Speaking
• Advantageous Time Zone
• Good Work Ethics
• Good Communication System and Infrastructure
• Stable Government
• Growing Economy
  

Acumen Legal Services (India) Private Limited is a premier Legal Process Outsourcing company headquartered in Hyderabad, India with its office in Texas, USA.

Acumen areas of expertise include Legal Research and Analysis, Litigation Support, Drafting and Documentation apart from general Para-legal services across different verticals.

However, Acumen is best know for its extensive Patent Outsourcing Services that include Patent Search & Prosecution, Patent Mining, Patent Mapping, Patent Landscaping, Patent Analytics, Patent Citation Analysis, IP Audit, Claim Charting, Competitive Patents Intelligence Reports, IP Due Diligence

Acumen guarantees quicker turnaround time for its clients, with its huge pool of resources and round-the-clock timings. It ensures complete confidentiality when dealing with sensitive information. It also conducts multiple checks at different levels in order to meet the client’s standards.

Acumen’s cross functional team of domain experts comprises of highly qualified and experienced professionals from the legal industry. Coupled with the support of its legal partners, RVR Associates (a reputed IPR and Trademarks firm in India), Acumen is a LPO firm par excellence.

Acumen caters to a wide range of industries such as Law Firms, IP Firms, Corporate Departments, State and Federal Governments, Individual Attorneys, Financial Institutions, Banks, Legal Research Firms and Publishers in the legal segment, to name a few.