Outsourcing - Are You Ready To Save?

Law Scribe Inc., based in Glendale California, provides outsourced office support services, and Kunoor Chopra's business is one of the fastest growing trends in the legal profession. Their tagline is 'Global Solutions for Outsource Support'.

JM: How did you start Law Scribe?
KC: I wanted to run my own business but remain in the legal field and, because of my ties to India and what I saw occurring in the medical field with respect to outsourcing, I saw the potential to outsource in the legal industry.

Three years ago, we started as a legal transcription company and have now evolved into a full-service office support company for law firms and other businesses. I am a practicing lawyer from California and, based on my background, I saw a need for law firms to save money. I have an office set up in Gurgaon, located just outside New Delhi, where all my employees perform work for the clients, while my U.S. operations consist of my sales staff and client relations/quality review.

Who is on your team?
Licensed Indian attorneys, transcribers, document coders, supervisors for all the teams and a country manager. My arrangements vary from hourly and project work to individuals assigned full-time for a particular U.S. client.

How can a law firm save money?
They can save money in many areas. We are paying high salaries to assistants and it is hard to find good support. To find a balance, we have in-house staff focus upon higher skilled tasks and outsource the administrative or research work, thereby allowing firms to save time and money - more cost effective and efficient.

What examples of work do you outsource?
Transcription, document coding, indexing and review, legal research (most can be done online), deposition summaries and other law and motion preparations.

What kinds of attorneys will benefit?
Small to midsize firms, particularly those practicing in the area of personal injury or class actions. Because they cannot pass on legal fees to their clients by outsourcing, these firms cut down on their overhead and can now fight 'big firm paper with paper'. Law firms spend a lot of time and money in the discovery process and now plaintiff firms can do likewise. Large firms benefit from outsourcing the administrative functions like word processing and document/coding. As the market becomes more competitive, larger firms will need to look to being outsourcing more subjective work such as legal research, deposition summaries and document review.

What kind of services would you provide for class action and personal injury?
Law clerk type services such as legal research, discovery, deposition summaries and document review.

As well, Law Scribe is offered 24/7 and the U.S. attorneys can communicate directly with Indian attorneys via local U.S. phone number, instant messenger or email.

What kind of savings can be expected?
One of my clients is an estate planning organization and we tailored a solution for them. We organized a team in India to run their software and work directly with members of their organization to assist in their estate planning and marketing work. For this client, the goal was to have 100 LawScribe employees working for the members of the estate planning organization within one year.

This would save them at least $100,000 per month combined; in other words, $1,000 per member per month. The savings when using law clerks is significantly higher. For example, a law firm can pay less than a $26,000 salary to a full time law clerk experienced in handling attorney level work.

Attorneys could realize savings of 50 percent or more in any of the law clerk associated services.

How do you ensure that the information is kept secure?
Based on my past experience with LawScribe, we provide quality service and maintain client confidentiality.

We enter into a confidentially agreement with our employees as well as our clients and have numerous physical safeguards in our India office: Security guards are located at the entrance of our building and before the entrance to the production floor. Individuals are not allowed to carry any items onto the production floor including telephones, purses, pens, papers - nothing. Guards check everyone physically when they enter and leave the production floor. All employees have lockers outside the floor. Employees are not allowed to use their computers for personal use and this is monitored by supervisors.

How often do you visit the India office?
I go to Gurgaon about 4 or 5 times a year, usually for a few weeks each trip. My main focus when there consists of hiring and training. Since the beginning of 2006, I hired 40 new people, from lawyers to coders. It is also rewarding to be able to give back to my community.

What kind of feedback did you initially receive?
At first, people were hesitant but I explain to them that we are not trying to take jobs away from people here in the U.S. Rather, it is a re-allocation of work; having the more skilled or in-house staff do work which requires them to be in the office.

It's a win-win situation on both sides of the globe. Even if firms end up downsizing because they use our services, the people in India are earning more money now and exports from the U.S. have increased due to Indian employees making money and outsourcing business. In other words, Indians are using U.S. products.

How do you see the future of outsourcing?
It is the wave of the future and for law firms to stay competitive they are going to have to come up with a solution relating to outsourcing.

Contact: email kchopra@law-scribe.com;
(800) 432-0529
Or visit http://www.law-scribe.com/