Piece of the action

As recently as a year ago, the prospect of Slaughter and May outsourcing legal services overseas seemed as likely as a US president winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet, as a new decade dawns, President Obama has his medal and legal process outsourcing (LPO), and notably offshoring, is being weighed up by leading law firms and corporate counsel alike.

‘Our position has been overstated. We are looking at the area – just as any firm of a substantial size is going to be,’ explains Slaughters practice partner Paul Olney. The firm’s dalliance with LPO is hardly a first for law firms, or even a rarity. Still, it is being seen as a sign that some of the City’s most profitable and most conservative firms are taking the possibility seriously. And while cost-saving is a watchword for clients, there is genuine appeal to a technique that offers firms a way of taking low-level legal services and cutting the expense drastically, sometimes even in half.

That offshoring and outsourcing was a hot topic in 2009 is in no doubt. From February, when Osborne Clarke announced a £50m, seven-year deal with outsourcing services company Integreon to create the UK legal sector’s first onshore shared services centre, to November, when Allen & Overy signed its own deal with Integreon to offshore basic litigation document review to New York and Mumbai, saving anything up to 50% in costs, outsourcing has rarely been out of the news.

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