June/July 2010 / Features
Downturn Helps Legal Outsourcers Gain Market Share
The author, the director of a legal outsourcing service, writes that a disconnect has developed between corporate law departments seeking to cut costs and big law firms trying to implement higher billing rates. He notes that many large firms have shed lawyers at all experience levels in the past two years, which has created a large pool of talent to draw from and says that Washington D.C. alone has a pool of about 2000 attorneys who are willing to take outsourcing assignments.
He provides examples of projects in which legal outsourcers have saved corporations considerable money: A leading medical device company, dealing with a surge in product liability litigation and government enforcement actions, says it partnered with a legal outsourcing provider and achieved a first-year reduction of $50 million; a global minerals and energy company now outsources a substantial portion of its legal work, including bread-and-butter matters such as M&A due diligence, contact review and drafting, and legal research and analysis; a top-tier U.S. telecom firm, which has grown through acquisitions of smaller providers, turned to outsourcing attorneys for drafting and revising most of its mid-tier transactions. While continuing to retain law firm counsel for negotiating and structuring the deals, it relies on the outsourcing firm to create much of the acquisition-related documentation.
