The range of processes being outsourced in the legal sector has evolved from transcription, secretarial support, voice messaging and word processing to more domain specific work typically performed by paralegals, legal assistants, and professional support lawyers. This includes contract review, drafting and management, patent research, analysis and writing, litigation support and legal research, general research and review.
Contracts that need reviewing, amendments and tracking are typical activities considered ideal for outsourcing. Further document discovery and processing; preparation of case law bibles, compilation of client/witness, attendance and interview documents are also being done offshore to support an ongoing litigation. Generic research and creation of templates and precedents and other support functions performed by support lawyers are also suitable processes for offshore outsourcing.
Key legal services currently being sourced from India may be broadly categorized into
paralegal support, legal support and patenting services.
· Paralegal support:- Document processing, production and management: The services include word processing,legal transcription, legal coding, document conversion, keyword and XML tagging and
archiving.
· Legal support:- Drafting and revising contracts/agreements: Various types of contracts and agreements such as employee contracts, non-disclosure agreements, licensing and supplier agreements, etc are initially drafted by trained Indian lawyers and sent for review to US attorneys. Once reviewed, these may be sent back for further revisions and finalization. Proofreading may also be provided. In some cases Indian lawyers are also negotiating revisions with third parties.
. Legal Research:- Lawyers sift through large quantities of data using electronic databases and
the Internet, to provide focused research to law firms and attorneys. Legal research is
conducted for all sorts of US laws, including case and statutory law.
. Legal Counsel:- Outsourced legal counsel services for an in-house firm (with or without a legal
department) or a legal firm, encompass most of the areas: Antitrust, bankruptcy, construction,
corporate, criminal, civil rights, employment and employee benefits, energy, entertainment,
family, government, healthcare, immigration, insurance, intellectual property, Internet/Ecommerce, litigation, real estate, tax, telecommunications, trusts and estates and other areas. Legal advice and counsel is provided through telephones, emails or online methods.
· Patent Services:- These include patent research and analysis, helping file patent applications,infringement studies, and patent / trademark ‘prior art’ searches.
. Patent research and analysis:- Landscape studies, patent appraisals and valuation studies,
infringement analysis and prior art searching.
. Patent application drafting:- The various stages of filing a patent application (prior art searches, patentability assessment, patent landscaping, drafting specifications, drawings, etc) may be outsourced to an Indian party.
. Patent prosecution:- Indian companies are helping US attorneys in the patent prosecution
process, from providing a technical assessment of the prior art cited by a patent examiner to
drafting responses to the examiner’s objections.
