Offshoring: Necessity, not Choice

No one enjoys offshoring. It involves inconvenient change, can be challenging to manage and has a number of inherent risks. Nevertheless, the competitive advantages gained in the form of cost-savings and increased productivity cannot be ignored.

Let's imagine two identical competing plaintiff's law firms, each with $2.5 Million in annual revenues, $2.0 Million in expenses, including a marketing budget of $225,000.

Now, envision this: one firm saves $200,000 a year in operating expenses by offshoring redundant legal support functions, as well as some document production and research. They reallocate the entire amount to marketing. This firm now has a $425,000 annual marketing budget.

Normally, the firm would dedicate 20% of the marketing budget to online marketing ($85,000 of the new budget of $425,000). The firm has also offshored part of its online marketing efforts, so instead of spending $85,000, they are now spending $40,000 for the same results. The firm chooses to reinvest the $45,000 in savings and more than double its online marketing investment. The end result is the marketing budget equivalent of $470,000, versus the original $225,000 budget.

Offshoring is here. Your competition is hoping you find it too inconvenient to act.

Legal Process Outsourcing & Litigation Technology Trends - Interview with Shree Laxman of Law Allies

We have a very special posting lined up for today. I had the opportunity to interview Shree Laxman, the President of Law Allies, which is a client that I have worked with. Law Allies is a leading provider of technology, outsourcing and consulting services, specializing in the claims / litigation domain.

Q. Shree, you have worked with many progressive litigation firms. Can you tell LitigatorEdge readers, what is it that these firms do right technologically?

A. Law Firms, like many other businesses, have to understand the changing paradigm of operations in this day and age. Law firms have to be open 24/7 and attorneys need to have access to cases 24/7 and from anywhere. The thing that most successful law firms do right, is to ensure total control over their information, at all times, ubiquitously.

Q. In your opinion, what are the most critical technology elements for a plaintiff's firm?

A. Access to their information from anywhere anytime is the most critical element for a plaintiff law firm. The firm needs to have a case manager application online, and all documents should be electronic. The system should be able to "talk" to other applications like court calendars, investigation agencies, medical document retrieval systems, etc... This Web capability allows the firm to not only have presence in the immediate state, but anywhere in the US, or beyond.

Q. How about for a defense firm?

A. For a defense firm, billing is a crucial element. The traditional way of billing, which involved sending out a monthly bill, by having the attorney, paralegal and secretary dedicate time to this, is an inefficient and laborious approach to this task. The technology should be able to track in "real time" the tasks that are performed by attorneys and paralegals. Also, there is great competition between defense firms and they need need to be able to showcase their case winnings and statistics to insurance companies and other clients. Currently, many defense firms do not have a good in house library of their cases, because they lack a consolidated case management system.

Q. We hear so much negative publicity about the outsourcing of call centers and how this can adversely impact customer service for large corporations. Is it really possible for a litigation firm to improve its customer service by outsourcing functions? If so, which functions are most outsourceable for litigation firms and how does this work?

A. Outsourcing is often confused with "offshoring". The concept of outsourcing is to concentrate all resources and efforts on core functions, while not getting distracted with expenses and efforts on non-core functions. There is only one universal way of being profitable. Profits equal income minus expenses. By analyzing a firm's operations', non core functions can be identified and optimized and these functions can be outsourced to companies that specialize in these functions. Doing this can considerably increase a firm's revenues while decreasing expenses.

Q. Our blog readers appreciate how important client relationships are. What are some of the technological steps a law firm can take to improve client relationships?

A. In this day and age, access is everything. A firm has to be accessible and operational 24/7. There is no reason for a firm to be fixated by the old age model of 9-5 and confined to a single office location. A client should have access to the firm, its cases and be aware of any changes in status of its cases at all times and from any location.

Q. How can plaintiff's lawyers leverage their internal technology to become better marketers?

A. The evolution of technology in today's world has gone from Web 1.0, which was a pure plain Web site acting like a visiting card to Web 2.0, which is a service and interactive application like online banking, policy and claims handling by insurance companies. A majority of law firms and health care providers still have not embraced a Web 2.0 model and some have not even gotten to the point of Web 1.0. Plaintiff's lawyers can no longer think only in terms of having a Web presence. They need to provide a better service and better access to their clients in order to keep up with the times and with competition. The referral systems need to mature also to take advantage of the collaborative marketing - for example Google referral.


Q. You have been working with some of the most prominent litigation firms in the industry for some time now. What have you learned about working with these firms that you can share with other vendors who wish to partner with litigation firms?

A. The companies need to evolve toward service based models rather than product based models. Across the horizon, even the heavy weights of product companies like Microsoft have made a push toward Office Online and Microsoft MSN Platform. It is just a matter of time before old paradigms of product based sales will be outdated.

Well, many thanks to Shree for his valuable insight. In summary, [Tip:] make sure to keep up with technology trends if you want to keep up with the competition.

For more information on technology and outsourcing solutions that your firm cn leverage or, if you have any specific questions for Shree, please e-mail me at: jzissu1-litigation@yahoo.com.