Today, most of the reputed law firms deal with heavy workloads on an everyday basis. In this scenario, they usually delegate their non-core activities to paralegals, also known as legal assistants. These professionals generally provide data collection, management, and accounting support to lawyers and other legal practitioners. Although the paralegal staff can be recruited in-house, it puts an additional burden on the firm, especially managing in-house staffing. On the other hand, the paralegal tasks can be outsourced. The outsourcing lends multiple benefits in terms of efficiency and scalability. Also referred to as legal process outsourcing (LPO), law firms adopt the strategy to save their resources and increase the profit margins. Given below is an overview of the different ways in which paralegal outsourcing enhances the overall profitability of a law firm:

Excellent Quality of Services

With the growing modernization and digitalization of legal work, there is a rise in the need for various paralegal specialists. Deploying outside services lets you tap into the vast range of talent and quality expertise.. Since the independent practitioners are significantly proficient and experienced in their particular areas, they contribute well to filling the gaps in a law firm’s in-house staffing. You can outsource the paralegal work to the freelance paralegals or the outsourcing companies that offer relevant services

The majority of the LPO providers work 24/7 so that the associated law firms do not have to face time zone issues. Besides, the present-day outsourcers use advanced technology to execute different tasks, which further extends a competitive edge to the law firms.

Greater Scalability and Flexibility

One of the biggest advantages of paralegal outsourcing is the improvement in versatility and flexibility of legal firms. As per the category of cases, the firms are required to direct and utilize variable resources and workforce. This can be challenging for firms that have limited in-house staff capacity. However, such problems can be conveniently overcome with the help of paralegal outsourcing. The outsourcers aid in faster and easier adaptability to distinct situations that the legal firms are likely to come across. Since the external staff work on a short-term and temporary basis, they can be hired whenever the need arises.

Even legal firms cannot thrive without adjusting to the newly emerging demands in the world of ever-evolving business environments. Apart from reducing the excessive workload of the firms, outsourcing boosts their business competencies. For instance, a single resource in an outsourcing company is capable of handling multiple paralegal assignments such as collecting data, docketing it and preparing forms.

Achieving Overall Better Work Productivity

The major purpose behind outsourcing paralegal tasks is to lessen the work pressure of in-house legal teams and propel their efficiency. When the legal firms pass on the non-specialized tasks to paralegal outsourcers, their legal specialists can devote more time and energy to the specialized work. In other words, the in-house staff can give their full attention to the high-priority tasks while the external staff tackles the secondary matters. This results in better productivity and efficiency of the firm’s employees.

LPO agencies help streamline the tedious legal procedures and curtail the complexities of tasks carried out by specialist lawyers. For instance, LPO firms flawlessly manage paralegal processes such as docketing throughout the prosecution cycle without missing deadlines, preventing the application from being abandoned. Similarly, such firms’ expertise and end-to-end support in tasks like patent filing form preparation ensures well-structured documentation of your IP so that it falls in line with the guidelines of the respective patent office.

Higher Cost-Effectiveness

Paralegal outsourcing leads to considerable cost savings for the law firms. As the non-core tasks are allotted to LPO service providers, the firm does not have to incur the cost of recruiting and training the paralegal staff. All these overhead expenses are taken care of by the outsourcing companies, whereas the legal firms get to retain the related tax benefits. This especially proves profitable to the small and medium-sized firms, who have relatively fewer resources and facilities to accommodate many employees.

Owing to the contractual on-demand nature of LPO, law firms enjoy financial freedom from delivering standard employee benefits. The freelance paralegals are paid on an hourly basis or as per the outsourcing agency’s criteria. However, depending upon the firm’s requirements, some of the external staff may be hired for longer durations. Nowadays, legal firms prefer to outsource their additional tasks to countries that offer high-quality work at affordable pay rates. According to Grand View Research’s latest report, the Asian Pacific region is the most popular LPO destination.

The current era of digitalization has further simplified the process of paralegal outsourcing. Today, the paralegal outsourcers perform different tasks like legal research, information analysis, data retrieval, etc., using special software tools and applications. Grand View Research states that the global LPO market is projected to expand at 31.8% from 2019 to 2025 (as mentioned in the above report link). As the industry flourishes in several sectors, legal firms are expected to opt for paralegal outsourcing shortly. Ultimately, the right combination of in-house legal work and outsourced paralegal tasks is bound to be tremendously profitable for the legal firms.

Sagacious IP’s intellectual property management solutions are designed to offer end-to-end support to businesses. Our team of highly qualified patent practitioners is adept at managing IPs with an objective to drive growth and generate new revenue opportunities for organizations.

-The Editorial Team

Having Queries? Contact Us Now!