Tag Archives: lpo

In search of the missing link

Posted on by
Reply
Earthquake in Indonesia: thousands die, no Britons involved

This kind of laconic if self-centered headline has always amused me. We tend to think things are important if they affect us and less so if they do not. On that basis I wonder if we should have been concerned about the recent report from NASA that preceded one of its satellites falling to earth. The agency did not know when or where the satellite would drop but in order to assuage the fears of the populace at large said that it will be somewhere between Alaska and the tip of Southern America, it would be in late September but could be in October and, doubtless, we were all pleased to learn that there was only a one in 3,200 chance of satellite parts hitting anyone.

If ever there was a piece of more useless headline information, I have yet to see it. Presumably, the inhabitants of the whole continent of America would have been taking precautions for an event that had a real chance of catastrophe. After all, a one in 3,200 chance spread amongst about 500 million people is still a 0.000006 chance that someone might suffer from a severe headache when hit by part of the stray satellite falling out of the night sky, clobbering them on their way to work.

Continue reading →

The hokey cokey

Posted on by
Reply

You put your left leg in
You put your left leg out
In, out, in, out
Shake it all about
You do the Hokey Cokey and you turn around
That’s what it’s all about.

First there was outsourcing. You know what I mean. Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) in exotic places like the Philippines, South Africa, Sri Lanka and India.

Then there was insourcing. Something of a Millnet idea but more of the Smart Insourcing team in a moment.

Now there is Near Shoring.

Continue reading →

Snowman theft armless say police

Posted on by
Reply

One of the best loved stories of recent years is Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman with its music by Howard Blake. In case you are not familiar with the story (and surely everyone has heard the main theme tune Walking in the Air) it concerns a little boy who makes a snowman one day. Unable to sleep he decides to check on the snowman in the night and finds it has come to life. They have a number of adventures together before returning to the garden of the house where the boy lives.

We have all had to get used to a snowy theme in the past week or so. Tales abound of difficulties encountered by this person and that but I wonder if you heard the story of the woman who dialled 999 and explained to the switchboard operator that her snowman had gone missing?

“I went out to have a fag,” she said, “and he’s gone.”

Continue reading →

Is there life after outsourcing?

Posted on by
Reply

We’ve heard it said (and we’ve said it ourselves often enough) that the next big thing after outsourcing is going to be… insourcing. It will probably also come as no surprise that our version of it is called smart insourcing.

What is smart insourcing? Simply put, smart insourcing allows law firms to draw upon a pool of local paralegal talent as if it were an extension of their own in-house paralegal team.

Document review, in particular, is one of those requirements that tends to come up at short notice and with a degree of urgency that can place a serious strain on a law firm’s own resources. Millnet Smart Insourcing allows law firms to augment their in-house capability, using local resources, at times of the greatest need.

Why have we done it?

Continue reading →

Squaring the circle

Posted on by
Reply

Former Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, once quipped that a week was a long time in politics. After a string of events which were calculated to make a lesser man blanch, Wilson was phlegmatic. He had spent most of his life climbing the greasy pole which is politics and he obviously felt that he needed to present an unconcerned mien to the public whatever the difficulties he or his Government faced at the time. His predecessor but one, Harold Macmillan was less phlegmatic and more laconic. When asked what was the greatest challenge facing a statesman, he replied: “Events, dear boy, events.”

Consider, however, how much more frightening than a mere week must have been the predicament of “Los 33” at the start of their ordeal. In the end they were all safely rescued after 69 days but 10 weeks must have seemed like an eternity to them at the outset and the original prediction that they would not be rescued until Christmas must have caused an agony of despair unknown to a politician.

Continue reading →

Squid & cream

Posted on by
Reply

With summer coming to an end (although the recent weather over the Bank Holiday suggests this has already happened) we can look forward with keen anticipation to what the autumn and the first half of 2011 will bring.

Incidentally, why do we all still have to suffer bank holidays? Given to bank workers in the late 19th century who did not have proper holidays, they are an outmoded concept where the state allows you to have a holiday on a given Monday when the weather is “guaranteed” to be poor and everyone else is on holiday so you cannot get anything done. Note to Coalition: Abolish bank holidays (except Christmas and Easter as these are religious festivals) and allow everyone an additional number of days of statutory holidays to be taken when we want and not just because it is ghastly Wilsonian May Day or August 31st!

Continue reading →

LPO survey feedback

Posted on by
Reply

Thanks to all those who responded to my recent “Legal Process Outsourcing” survey – we had a respectable response rate of around 20% and some individual feedback for which we are most grateful. Here are some preliminary conclusions -

  • Of those responding, a clear majority of about 70% had not outsourced and had no experience of the process. Of the 30% who had some experience, over 80% had experienced mixed or negative aspects of the process – only one respondent said they had had an entirely positive experience.
  • Of those who were thinking of outsourcing, the results were again mixed with 46% agreeing they would consider outsourcing of large disclosure exercises but 54% saying they remained to be convinced of the benefits or who had come to the conclusion that the work should not be outsourced in any circumstances.
  • In response to the question about which aspects of their work they would consider outsourcing, 77% thought that they would consider outsourcing initial document review, the collection and processing of ESI and document review or aspects of their middle or back office functions.

Continue reading →

Life, but not as we know it

Posted on by
Reply

Some of us knew it already. Others denied it. Still more did not want to know about it and others closed their minds to it.

I am not talking about Legal Process Outsourcing, nor Smart e-Discovery. I am talking about a report I first heard early last Thursday morning on the Today programme about the discovery of more than 70 flint tools and chips unearthed in Happisburgh on the North East coast of Norfolk.

Happisburgh (hands up all of you who thought it was called Happy’s Berg, when it should be pronounced Hazeboro’!!) is a small village on the coast of Norfolk between Cromer and Great Yarmouth. Until last week it was remarkable for little more than a red and white painted lighthouse, a nearby garden owned and cultivated by one Alan Gray and a propensity for its houses nearest to the sea to fall off the cliffs into the waves below, a phenomenon common enough on the east coast of England and one which arouses huge controversy every time someone suggests that it would be a better use of taxpayers’ money NOT to shore up the ever crumbling cliffs against the encroaching sea but to pay proper compensation to the house owners to enable them to move elsewhere.

Continue reading →

You are only Jong 1200 times

Posted on by
Reply
I make no apology for returning once again to the subject of Legal Process Outsourcing or LPO as it is colloquially known. The phenomenon is also known as Legal Services Outsourcing or LSO, making both sound like performances from the Royal Albert Hall rather than the relatively new process of instructing foreign lawyers to carry out legal tasks in a different country for a fraction of the price you would pay in this country.

LPO/LSO appears to be pretty high on the agenda of managing partners of law firms and others at present, presumably because the notion that you can use lawyers offshore to carry out tasks for a fraction of the cost of your own lawyers within the jurisdiction is irresistible in these straitened times. I am not sure what the army of paralegals and others who would have been engaged on the various tasks in this country think about it; they are surely going to be out of work if outsourcing increases, but for present purposes, I propose to leave consideration of that aspect of LPOs to one side.

Continue reading →

Technophobia alive and well and living offshore

Posted on by
Reply

In the June 24th edition of The Economist there appeared an article entitled “Passage to India”.

This was not a reference to the E M Forster story written in the 1920s, which uses the trial of Doctor Aziz accused of raping Adela Quested on a visit to the Marabar caves to produce a trenchant commentary on the sometimes awkward relations between India and the British Raj some quarter of a century before Independence. This was a story about the growth of legal outsourcing with a subsidiary strap line proclaiming “Companies and law firms are turning to India for cut price legal services”.

Much has been written recently about the growth of legal process outsourcing and in a piece entitled A cunning plan  [7th April, 2010]  I mentioned that, on the back of outsourcing legal work to Indian lawyers at CPA Global thereby saving 20% of its legal costs, Rio Tinto’s general counsel Leah Cooper had jumped ship to join CPA as its strategy director.

Continue reading →