The legal side of any business is one of the most important and essential in its working. A company may have a legal department but mostly the legalities are handled by various Law Firms who are specialized in the said area. A law firm is a business entity fashioned by one or more lawyers to engage in the practice of law and the main service rendered by a law firm is to counsel clients (individuals or corporations) about their legal rights and responsibilities. Also, to stand for clients in civil or criminal cases, business transactions, and other matters in which legal advice and other aid is sought.
Law firms can differ extensively in size. The smallest law firms are lawyers practicing alone, who form the vast majority of lawyers in nearly all countries.
Smaller firms have a tendency to focus on particular specialties of the law (e.g. patent law, labor law, tax law, criminal defense, personal injury); larger firms may be composed of quite a few specialized practice groups, allowing the firm to diversify their client base and market, and to offer a variety of services to their clients.
Large law firms are frequently divided into separate litigation and transactional departments. The transactional department advises clients and handles transactional legal work, such as drafting contracts, handling necessary legal applications and filings, and evaluating and ensuring compliance with relevant law; while the litigation department represents clients in court and handles necessary matters throughout the process of litigation.
The largest law firms in the world are headquartered primarily in the United Kingdom and the United States. Baker & McKenzie and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom are two of the biggest Law Firms in U.S.A. while Norton Rose Fulbright, Linklaters and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer are the biggest names in U.K. However, large firms of more than 1,000 lawyers are also found in Australia (Minter Ellison (1,500 attorneys), China (Dacheng 2,100 attorneys) and Spain (Garrigues, 2,100 attorneys). In America, the systems of licensing attorneys on a state-by-state basis, having an H.Q. in a single U.S. state and a close spotlight on profits per partner has restricted the size of most American law firms.
Thus, whilst the most money-making law firms in the world are in New York, four of the six largest firms in the world are based in London in the United Kingdom. But the sheer size of the United States results more number of large firms on the whole – a 2003 survey found that the United States alone had 901 law firms with more than 50 lawyers, while there were only 58 such firms in Canada, 44 in Great Britain, 14 in France, and 9 in Germany. There is an increasing tendency towards globalization of law firms.
Even though law firms tend to make or rather are expected to make lot of profit, several large and established law firms have filed for bankruptcy since early 2012, questioning the traditional business model they follow. Law firms are required by law to be owned only by lawyers, leading them to adopt the partnership model. Partners typically hire recent law school graduates as associates, paying them salaries and billing clients for their time. As companies spend less on outside counsel to reduce costs, law firms are tightening their belts to maintain profitability.
Most law firms function on the traditional partnership model. In this, a few partners provide the startup capital for the firm, hire associates and take home the divided profit. Lawyers generate income for the firm by billing clients a fixed hourly rate for their work and partners increase their profits by hiring more associates to generate more billable hours. Talented associates might be offered partnership positions to keep them with the firm. Clients choose firms based on their reputations, which partners closely guard.
Many large corporations have at least some in-house counsel, paid for exclusively from company coffers. In-house counsel handles most routine legal operations of a business, but they can easily become overwhelmed with work. Some firms, called outsourcing firms, specialize in providing relief legal work to in-house counsel. They build relationships with companies that want to contain legal costs and assign lawyers to service those accounts. Outsourcing firms often avoid the overhead associated with more traditional partnerships.
Several L.P.O. (Legal Process Outsourcing) Firms emerged in 2004 and changed the way legal industry handled legal processes for corporate houses.
L.P.O. is the practice of a law firm or business obtaining legal support services from an outside law firm or legal support services company much like any other form of outsourcing. When the L.P.O. provider is based in another country, the practice is called off-shoring and involves the practice of outsourcing any activity except those where personal presence or contact is required, e.g. appearances in court and face-to-face negotiations.
When the L.P.O. provider is based in the same country, the practice of outsourcing includes agency work and other services requiring a physical presence, such as court appearances. This process is one of the incidents of the larger movement towards outsourcing. The most commonly offered services have been agency work, document review, legal research and writing, drafting of pleadings and briefs, and patent services.
This phenomenon has been a part of the legal experience since the 1950s, when it was limited only to patents. Later, firms began to contract certain services to back door firms. The process of subcontracting part of the legal process to different countries is at a promising stage, with relatively consistent market growth.
Legal process outsourcing has predominantly been to countries that had previously taken advantage of the business process outsourcing wave. LPO providers have established themselves in Canada, India, the Philippines, the United States, Israel, and Latin America. Bodhi Global Services (P), Ltd and Clutch Group are the biggest L.P.O.s in India while Integreon Managed Solutions, Inc is the best from Philippines.
Such L.P.O.s offer various services some of which are contract drafting, review and management, compliance assistance, e-discovery, litigation support, patent support, document review, legal research, etc.
Due Diligence Corporate companies and law firms largely engage offshore LPO’s, and India is the most popular destination. In spite of the global financial crisis, the LPO sector has consistently grown (around 40% to 60% annually) in recent years. The growth is going to continue and LPO firms need to update themselves to provide quality services as the BIG law firms are seeking quality LPO services.
At CrossProf we aim to find you the L.P.O. suiting your needs as best as possible. We aspire is to figure out your requirements and match them with the LPOs registered with us and hence provide you the best service. Since each such organization is registered, they are trustworthy and guaranteed to satisfy your requests.Register yourself at Client Registration to submit about ypur lega requirments & connect to global legal experts. Legal professionals can even join us to expand their business globally, just sign up at Member Registeration.