Legal outsourcing stands tall despite financial crisis

There's a silver lining to every dark cloud. The global recession may be taking its toll on most industries, but the Indian legal processes outsourcing is standing tall.

 

Here is a verbatim transcript of Pranshu Sikka's comments on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

 

The Jury's out on the amount of damage the global financial turbulence will cause to Indian industry. Some sectors like manufacturing, real estate, and banking may be struggling to maintain growth momentum, but one sector seems to be in fine fettle.

 

The LPO, or the Legal Process Outsourcing, industry is certainly living in interesting times. More recruitments, higher salaries and a rapidly expanding business, it's clearly waxing, when the rest of the corporate world is waning.

 

Globally, corporates are looking to cut costs especially legal expenses. Case enough for international law firms to outsource their work to cost efficient centers. Enter: India. But that's just one argument.

 

The second, equally compelling reason for growth is that the subprime crisis and high financial turbulence has increased the quantity of litigation work across the globe. And so, LPOs, which so far were concentrating on intellectual property rights and trademark violations, are raking in the moolah.

 

Sanjay Kalmani, Co-CEO and Co-founder of Mumbai-based LPO Pangea3, said, "The past few months have been the strongest revenue months for us ever. We have seen a 100% growth in business over the last 6 months with a phenomenonal increase in litigation work related to sub-prime crisis."

 

Industry experts say that various companies have also hired atleast 50-70 fresh people over this period, only in the litigation space. This situation has paved the way for aggressive growth in the sector.

 

Bhaskar Bagchi, Country Head, Intellevate said, "American bar association which has till now not been a great believer of outsourcing, came out with a notice a month back saying how it is not unethical but also increases efficiency. I think it's a huge change and it's a clear fallout of the recent economic situation.

 

And with such a strong defence, there's no need for closing arguments. The verdict is clear: Bust-time for most sectors is certainly boom time for Legal Process Outsourcing.