1. To have considerable savings on manpower and infrastructure costs .
2. Focus on core activities by outsourcing internal functions like HR , Finance, CRM and Data entry/Management to an organization which would specialize in executing these functions and according to the clients requirements.  For example, a manufacturing unit whose focus should be Production ,Quality maintenance and Production R&D, would outsource it’s basic functions  so as to maintain focus on it’s core competencies.
3. Maintenance and access to systematically retrieve large amounts of data which would  otherwise engage resources and be inconvenient to maintain.

The recent trend in legal outsourcing is to send jobs traditionally performed by law firms in the United States to other countries such as India.

Generally, tasks that are being outsourced to India are similar to the work being performed by paralegals and legal assistants in the United States which can include document review, legal research, patent applications, contract drafting, litigation support services and paralegal services.

A. Choosing an Off-shore Destination – Why India?

India in considered a suitable and preferable destination for outsourcing legal work
because the Indian legal system is similar to the legal system in the United States and attorneys in India are trained in similar manner as their U.S. counterparts.

English being the official language of the India, Indian lawyers speak and write in English.
Attorneys in  India, on an average, are paid one-third of their U.S. counterparts by way of salary renumeration. Furthermore, Indian attorneys who are employed in the private sector are not likely to expect health insurance coverage, any retirement plans, disability benefits, or life insurance as a part of their benefits package. And if any such benefits are provided to attorneys in India, the cost of providing such benefits is generally much lower than in the United States.

Considering the difference in costing between India and the United States, the resulting cost savings of  outsourcing legal work to India could be anywhere between 40 percent and 60 percent of the cost of maintaining comparable staff to perform such work in the U.S. There exists a 10 to 13 hour time difference between India and the United States, which can prove helpful in managing the work flow. This time difference allows a requesting attorney to submit an urgent matter for production by an Indian outsourcing firm overnight, because attorneys in India are able work on the matter during their normal day-time business hours, allowing the requesting attorney to receive the finished work product on his or her desk the next morning. The requesting attorney can then revisit the work product at their convenience during their day and yet be able to request follow-up work, if necessary, over the following night. Therefore, using a combination of U.S. and Indian attorneys can ensure that pressing matters receive attention around the clock, adding to efficiency and client service.

B. What Kinds of Services Can Be Outsourced Effectively?

Two kinds of services typically are outsourced. One includes quantitative, low-skill
legal tasks, such as indexing and objective coding, database creation and maintenance, and legal transcription. The other includes qualitative, skill-intensive legal tasks such as due  diligence reports, multi-state surveys of law, patent and trademark work, review of transactional and litigation documents, contract drafting, legal research, and document drafting.

The quantitative, low-skill tasks are not something unique to the legal profession and have been outsourced to cost-saving countries, such as India, for a very long time by other sectors, including the financial, healthcare, and software and information technology industries. Lowskill legal services constitute an obvious extension of the services provided to other sectors and are typically provided by the same service providers who cater to multiple other sectors. Lowskill services generally are not performed by attorneys. Outsourcing of highly skill-intensive legal services, however, is a more recent phenomenon that has been attracting attention and growing in popularity over the past few years. Any effective delivery of such highly skillintensive
services requires excellent legal training and competency. Since the cost savings are
substantial, the demand for such outsourced services is expected to further grow provided the
quality is maintained.

On the other hand, projects that are most suitable to be outsourced involve multijurisdictional
legal research, contract drafting, drafting objective and persuasive legal
memoranda, due diligence reports, litigation support, and intellectual property services (such as
patent, trademark, or copyright searches, review, drafting, and portfolio management).

ITES : India, with it’s ever increasing  pool of skilled manpower has been a hot destination for  western organizations looking to cut costs by outsourcing labour intensive technical work. India with access to  latest technology and management practices has played a strong role in streamlining operations at a fraction of the cost. IGR provides onshore and offshore support to organisations.