Doing more for less

Downwards pressure on corporate legal budgets is forcing many companies and law firms to seek new ways to reduce legal spend or, at least, limit the amount spent on routine legal tasks.

But, despite compelling cost drivers, there has been very little innovation in this area to date. Fixing or capping fees paid to external counsel only tackles part of the problem, and often puts unnecessary pressure on the in-house team by bogging them down with low-level, but high-risk work. Surely there must be a better way of doing more work with existing resources?

Actually there is. Many forward-thinking companies are beginning to separate routine legal tasks from higher-value, opinion-driven legal work, in order to outsource work to cheaper, third-party suppliers, such as those based in India.

The cost benefits are well-known: hourly rates for repetitive tasks such as docketing can be half or less of what you would be paying for paralegals and associates in the UK or US - and fees are set up front, enabling you to project and cap spending.

But cost isn't the only driver behind the growth of legal process outsourcing (LPO): lawyers and paralegals (both in house and out of house) tend to give less weight to heavily routine or commoditised work, which can impact on quality, staff turnover and cost. In contrast, the professionals who work at LPO providers like CPA Global are specialists in exactly that sort of work, and so are committed to higher standards of output. It also frees up your in-house lawyers and paralegals to focus on competencies that are core to your company.

By incorporating CPA Global's LPO services into the daily running of its legal department, Rio Tinto estimates that it will cut 20% from its legal spend in the first year of operation alone. Managing attorney Leah Cooper explains how.

CPA Global has developed a tool called the 'legal heat map' to help highlight areas within a company's everyday legal business that can be offshored. Traditionally these identify crucial but highly repetitive projects, such as contract review, legal research, M&A and due diligence work, as well as more complicated tasks like patent searching and illustration.

However, CPA Global's LPO services extend far beyond the routine, repetitive and basic legal services that are common to the industry. Our specialists, based in the UK, US and India, support our clients in their more strategic legal work, meaning we are able to fill the void between flat LPO tasks and the advice provide by external law firms, meaning that we can work alongside or in addition to your existing teams.

At CPA Global we partner with our clients to provide a customised plan to meet the LPO requirements and objectives that are unique to their business.