I think it is wrong for LPOs and law fi rms to make extreme arguments about the other.
What I found successful time and time again at a reputable LPO was to have the law fi rms very involved in the sampling and oversight of the LPO work in a systematic manner— simply fulfi lling their ethical obligations.
The ethical arguments against LPO are a smokescreen. They are made by those who don’t want to think about what’s the best way to do the work. And the best way to do the work considers the ethical obligations, the economics, the business outcomes (e.g. timing) and the quality of the work. The quality of legal services can be measured. There are numerous examples of measuring and managing knowledge work that have been implemented in many professions and as soon as you start to do that then you start to see there are areas for improvement. It’s easy to hide behind ‘you can’t measure the quality of legal services’ or ‘we’ve got an ethical obligation that doesn’t allow us to use LPO’. I can name numerous law fi rms that have fundamentally reduced their costs; they are paid higher rates per hour by their clients; they involve their lawyers in oversight of LPO; and they get a higher quality, repeatable outcome by using LPO. Think about that for a minute: the client’s overall fees have gone down; they spend less on the law fi rm bill, but the law fi rm actually generates more profi t than it did before; their lawyers are no longer doing the heavy lifting, but they have a systematic way of overseeing quality and consistency of the work. Everyone wins.
Does this smokescreen then also apply to other criticisms the industry has drawn such as supervision of work, privacy concerns and professional indemnity insurance?
If you are not supervising the work that is done either inside your fi rm or with an LPO, you are running the risk of ethical breach or a quality problem and many of these problems will end up in insurance settlements. It’s imperative for fi rms to perform adequate supervision—do not do what I hear some fi rms and corporate legal
departments have done in the past and just throw the work over the wall to an LPO and hope for the best.
You can’t do that; you have to have a system in place to manage and oversee the work. If you don’t have a system that gives you reasonable confi dence, whether or not it’s internal or with your LPO, then you’re not ethically meeting your supervisory obligation. It’s simply the right thing to do—you’ve got a commitment to your client to deliver a quality service.
This is not just about the fi rm of course. The LPO has a responsibility. Does the LPO have adequate subject matter and supervisory expertise, the right management systems and information security systems in place? Does the LPO provider have the appropriate insurance coverage at the appropriate level in place?
There have been suggestions LPOs need to be regulated beyond individual law fi rms to ensure greater protections for clients. What are your opinions on regulation of the LPO industry?
As a member of the legal ecosystem, I personally don’t care so much about whether or not the LPO industry is regulated. But I do care about good, clear guidelines; and I care that not following those guidelines may have consequences. In general, I do think that frameworks for best practice, whether or not they’re industry or regulatory, are the best way to operate. Interestingly, the LPO community in general looks at guidelines as healthy because it would remove ambiguity.
Where do you see the future of LPO in the legal profession?
I don’t think “LPO” will be a term ten years in the future. It’s an acronym that we use today to distinguish between the delivery of advisory legal services and the fi rm delivery of non-advisory, process or legal support services. In the future I think you will see lawyers much more focused on a professional advisory role—really adding value. There will be a lot greater transparency between the legal department and the law fi rms regarding how much value they added. LPO will simply be the
non-advisory, process or legal support work that will be variously performed by the corporate legal department, sometimes by the law fi rms, and sometimes by third party companies.
Liam Brown founded Elevate (
www.elevateservices.com) in 2011 to provide consulting and technology solutions that improve effi ciency, quality and service for law fi rms and corporate legal departments. Previously he was the Founder, President and CEO of Integreon Inc. (
www.integreon. com), which he led from start-up in 2001 to annual sales of nearly $150 million by 2011. Under his leadership, Integreon pioneered the global delivery of high-value, legal, research and business services and technology to 32 of the Am Law 50, all of the top 10 global investment banks, 9 of the top 10 life sciences companies, 6 of the top 10 technology companies and 17 of the top 50 global brands.
Liam has twenty years of experience in the Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) industry, primarily serving investment banks, law fi rms and Global 1000 corporations. Prior to Integreon, he was the President, COO and co-founder of Conscium, a web-based virtual deal room business serving lawyers and bankers, which he sold in 2001 to then-NYSE-listed Bowne & Co. He is also an active investor in Web 2.0 and Cloud technologies, and an executive coach for founders of startups (www.
forwardinnovations.com).
Liam can be contacted by email:
liam.brown@
elevateservices.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64