Legal process outsourcing, also known as legal services outsourcing, has been in existence for the past 10 years. In the early years, clients who used these services were mainly general counsel who were intrinsically adventurous or who were faced with the immediate need of cutting costs. Legal services outsourcing was used on an ad hoc basis without any thinking around how best to maximize a corporation’s strategic goals. Around 2005, this began to change, and more corporations and law firms started to evince interest on how outsourcing can fit into overall organizational strategy as well as meet immediate needs.
The Great Recession has fundamentally and structurally changed the law business. This in turn has brought legal services outsourcing to the forefront as another arrow in the corporation’s or law firm’s quiver to deploy to achieve strategic results.
