Large volumes of information are stored electronically by legal firms. The challenge of collecting and reviewing the electronic evidence is a major concern for the Attorneys. This shifts the focus of the law professionals from the actual legal matters to retrieval of documents. When this part of the job is outsourced to document management experts the law firms can concentrate more on their work while the service provider can handle the retrieval of important evidence that is required for a particular case.

Availing a litigation support service will also bring huge cost savings. While choosing an offshore service provider the company can save as high as 60% to 85 %.

The support services provided that can help the law firms and legal process outsourcing companies are as follows:

Scanning of Documents

Storing paper is expensive and adds to the delays associated with retrieving stored documents. When the documents are scanned they can be better managed and helps in easy access and timely retrieval. All the documents are electronically stored and maintained by law firms which facilitate in the course of the procedure. The litigation support service provider can do the scanning of the valuable documents and electronically store the documents for easy reference and retrieval.

Documents Reviews

Typically in litigation large volume of documents are reviewed in an effort to identify if the documents are relevant to the case and the important points in the document which will prove as evidence for the case in hand. This process is time consuming and outsourcing brings in large benefits both on cost, man power and speed. The document review experts from the litigation support service have experts in the filed to read the large volume of documents and write review reports that will pertain to the case that they are dealing with thus helping the attorneys.

Coding of Case Support Documents

The documents that are stored as images are not easily searchable unless they are attached with some searchable information. This makes it difficult to search relevant documents from an image collection. Coding helps in this process and is done manually where the documents are looked in and the information captured and maintained in a database.

In order to develop an accurate database the law firms need consistent operational controls and excellent document review personnel. The litigation service providers have a clear understanding of the coding rules and they track every piece of paper in order to develop a client satisfied database for the process. This saves time for the law firms and helps them in their case studies.

Legal Transcription

Legal transcription is a very specialized field and it requires specialists in each industry for which the legal transcriptions are done. The legal transcription providers have experience in a variety of legal arenas including court proceedings, trials etc. They understand the client requirement and help the law firms to benefit from their experience.

Advantages:

Apart form the huge cost benefits that the law firms incur by outsourcing they also have the added advantage of saving valuable time in preparing documents, and training new set of work force on the various technical aspects involved in document retrieval and document review. If the law firms build a good relationship with their service provider with predefined sales agreement and data security systems in place then they can enjoy the benefits of outsourcing.

Outsourcing is always seen by companies in developed countries as a boon. Due to this reason outsourcing has come into major research by the workers and media alike in the developed countries. When the advantages are very clear for outsourcing the process to countries like India many a times the quality assurance and quality standards become an issue. When a company adopts a planned approach towards outsourcing taking into account the interests of employees and customers alike and come up with a balanced advance they will be able to overcome all the disadvantages in their decision.

When companies outsource their non core business they have the time to concentrate on the main aspect of the business and bring in overall efficiency in the work. They save the time that they have to spend on doing the repetitive task and which takes up considerable amount of their time. This time saved can be used to try new things with the business, learn more and experience new aspects of the industry. This will eventually help in expanding the business.

When companies decide to outsource they can avail of services at a lower cost without sacrificing the quality since service providers in India provide the same level of quality, sometimes even higher, to outsourcing services in the United States. They can save on the resources, training costs, Infrastructure, cost to purchase new tools and equipment for specific jobs and functions.

India enjoys a geographical advantage with the US considering the time difference between both the zones. This favors for a 24/7 support, which is one of the most important factors in any project. The Clients can give out their work at the time of leaving office and have the results next day morning.

However, for maximum benefit a well conceived outsourcing strategy and plan is necessary. A poorly conceived plan will give rise to problems such as rising cost, late deliveries; high customer returns. So, no matter what type of business, it will definitely pay dividends to think about the possibility and benefits of outsourcing.

When a company is considering outsourcing for the first time they will be wondering which process should be outsourced. The general impression is that the non core process is the ones that are outsourced. But the main concern here is how they can distinguish a process as non core when each process is inter related with one another and everything that happens in the business is critical to its successful operation.

What can be outsourced is different for each organization however; there are several standard criteria which can be referred when considering the functions to be outsourced.

• Functions that require high volume processing can be considered for outsourcing.
• Any function that involves large number of resources will be ideal to be outsourced.
• The function that requires consistent requirement can be outsourced.
• The function which requires measurable performance should be outsourced.
• Any area of business that needs improvement and needs high efficiency then they should be considered for outsourcing.

When back office processes should be considered first we can say that any back, middle and front office process are all functions that can be considered for Outsourcing. When a good relationship is worked between the service providers the business will definitely benefit from the outsourcing experience.