When it comes to the rise of India’s legal process outsourcing (LPO) companies, there are few neutral observers.
To consultants and academics who regularly rail against the inefficient and hidebound legal professions in the United States and the United Kingdom, Indian LPOs are the vanguard of a long-awaited and much-needed revolution. In a new introduction to his book The End of Lawyers? , legal technology guru Richard Susskind calls the LPO trend “irreversible” and highlights the June 2009 decision by Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto group to outsource a large amount of work to India. Rio Tinto’s actions made it “clear that there was no lofty type of legal job whose complexity and value elevated it entirely beyond market forces,” Susskind writes.
