India legal back-office work picks up on US slowdown

By Janaki Krishnan

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Legal process outsourcing is rapidly growing and is expected to become a $4 billion industry globally by 2015 with India occupying a significant chunk of it, industry players and analysts said.

U.S.-based Brown & Wilson Group Inc in its 2008 Black Book of Outsourcing has estimated the current value of legal outsourcing at $80 million, with more than three-fourths of it based in India.

"That is a very conservative estimate. I think it will grow faster as the market potential is huge," said Suhas Tuljapurkar, who was formerly a partner at Mumbai law firm DSK Legal and left it to found Legasis Services Pvt Ltd.

Legal process outsourcing is an industry in which in-house legal departments or organisations outsource legal work from areas where it is costly to carry out.

"Law firms are focussing to increase pressure from their clients to decrease costs and retain profits per partner," the Brown & Wilson report said, adding that every Indian homegrown law firm is building its own case for outsourcing.

The main areas of growth are discovery and litigation support, contract and document review services, and legal analytics and due diligence.

SLOWDOWN INCREASES OUTSOURCING

The sub-prime crisis in the United States and subsequent defaults have given rise to a lot of litigations, said Sanjay Kamlani, co-founder and chief executive of Pangea3 LLC, a top outsourcing firm.