Legal outsourcing adds value to the role of Intellectual Property

Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) is here to stay, says a Latham & Watkins partner, but it will be strongest in the areas where it's truly needed.

Following a speech to CPA Global's conference, How to realise better returns on your IP investments, recently held in London, IP Litigator Larry Cohen has spoken to IP Review Online about how legal process outsourcing (LPO) can add value to intangible assets.

'Essentially LPO can be helpful to the patent or trademark attorney, where the emphasis is on record keeping' Cohen remarked. 'The problem that most companies have is that record keeping is time-consuming. LPOs can provide the training and resources required. If you're in-house, unless you're really big, you don't have enough turnover to handle those tasks, so in those circumstances, outsourcing works really well.' Cohen added that expediting litigation was another major factor in cost-reduction, particularly when there is a need to produce thorough search results. 'On the document searching side,' he said, 'there is a requirement for no stone to be left unturned, which is a natural feature of the litigation process.'

While Cohen cannot see LPOs supplanting traditional patent or trademark attorneys, he does believe that they will further enhance the value obtained from the established legal structures. 'Improvements are outsourced,' he said, 'not fundamentals. CPA Global, for example, provides added value by acting as a consultancy.' Described by Cohen as 'the original legal outsourcer', CPA Global bases its consultancy work around a lifecycle approach that guides clients through every stage of their IP, from R&D and filing through to maintenance and commercialisation. This ensures that long-term IP strategies will be more cost effective.

Cohen is convinced that the future success of LPO companies will depend on how effectively they deploy their services. 'Generally, I think LPO has grown up,' he said, 'but it will need to be more targeted. In a sense, we're already seeing it in other forms of outsourcing, where corporations are farming some parts of their operations out to India and keeping others at home according to their business needs. Pharmaceutical firms tend to outsource a lot of the repetitive data processing involved in clinical trials.'

While LPO has been keen to highlight its vital role in meeting clients' budgetary objectives, Cohen thinks that the global economic crisis will act as a test for the sector's longevity. 'We're seeing a big rebalancing where everyone is trying to work out where it fits in the wider picture. The LPO industry has got to examine what it is good at and should look for areas where there is a large through-put based on geographical considerations. For instance most document work tends to emanate from the US.'