Implementing a Successful Legal Outsourcing Engagement

The legal industry is undergoing profound change. Is your firm prepared? Outsourcing some of your legal work is a compelling option for you to consider. Is outsourcing right for your firm? What are the benefits and what are the risks? How does your legal outsourcing engagement stack up against others? Are you undershooting the potential value of your engagement? These and other questions are addressed in Managing Partner's latest, must-read report on legal outsourcing; Implementing a Successful Legal Outsourcing Engagement. Whether you are currently outsourcing, considering outsourcing or your clients are inquiring about outsourcing, this report serves as a highly pragmatic and comprehensive reference guide for law firms and corporate counsels making decisions regarding a legal outsourcing engagement. Some of the profound changes dramatically altering the legal landscape include: legislative and regulatory shifts, firm consolidation, increased competition, and global expansion. Rising fees, cost-conscious clients and increased areas of risk exposure have forced legal professionals to adjust former business models to remain competitive. One of the most compelling strategies to meet these challenges is legal outsourcing - the transfer of legal functions to external providers both domestically (onshore providers) and to foreign locations (offshoring). What this report will cover: Part 1 of Implementing a Successful Legal Outsourcing Engagement examines every part of the outsourcing engagement, details best practices and examines the benefits, opportunities and challenges posed by outsourcing. Part I also provides an in-depth guide to selecting vendors, managing quality, risk management, ethical compliance, relationship governance, training staff and a host of other issues encountered in outsourcing. Moreover, Part I discusses: * The profound changes in the legal industry that set the stage for the emergence of outsourced legal services; * The recent economic events that are currently shaping the industry; * An analysis of the outsourcing service opportunities and operating models currently available; * The potential benefits of outsourcing and how to recognize and measure these benefits; * Ways to define, design and ensure quality for an outsourcing engagement; * How to select a vendor, navigate the negotiation process and manage the vendor relationship; * Risk management techniques and a guide to ethical compliance; * Contracting considerations and important terms and conditions; and * How to overcome specific outsourcing challenges and avoid common pitfalls. It will cover the benefits of outsourcing legal services such as: * Substantial cost reductions - from 10 per cent to 40 per cent compared to performing the service internally. Outsourcing typically saves corporate counsels at least 20 per cent of their total annual legal budget and, in some cases, a savings of up to 70 per cent from law-firm billing rates; * Better management of workflow variability in a declining or recovering economy; * Enhancing efficiencies without incurring excess capacity or firm overhead; * Managing risks by leveraging solutions previously too costly and uneconomical to pursue; * Leveraging outsourcing as a change agent to restructure inefficient internal processes; * Alternative time zones allowing around-the-clock service; * Access to a global pool of talent, including access to technical skills, emerging global markets and low-wage labour; and * Insight into a new and different ways of delivering legal services. It will also examine, weigh and provide proven strategies to overcome risks such as: * Security; * Confidentiality; * The ethical practice of law; * Professional liability; and * The quality of the legal services. Part 2 of the report offers case studies of law firms and organisations of a variety of sizes, locations and practice specialties and how they tackled an array of outsourcing challenges. While many firms and corporations are piloting outsourcing opportunities, the majority of engagements are not publicly recognised due to privacy concerns. These case studies provide an inside view to the legal outsourcing space and reveal what outsourcing strategies law firms and corporations are implementing, and how they have achieved success. Case study organisations highlighted in the report include: * Osborne Clarke * Pinsent Masons * ISS UK * MyHomeMove * Underwood & Associates Implementing a Successful Legal Outsourcing Engagement and featured case studies will help legal professionals gain a comprehensive understanding of the industry, recognise new opportunities, discover insight from prominent experts in the field, learn the right questions to ask and then build successful legal outsourcing solutions based on leading industry best practices.