But what we consider LPO industry comprises of is, pure play legal services providers, where the work clearly involves legal expertise and therefore is done by lawyers.

Within this pure play legal services outsourcing space, the work that is outsourced includes litigation support, review of supplier contracts, real-estate lease contracts, employee contract and the due diligence work involved in mergers and acquisitions. Another area of work that is outsourced is compliance related work, which involve not just compliance but putting certain legal administrative process in place. Another area is analytics which involves actually analyzing case laws, especially in an online context, to determine and maintain online content, legal databases. And lastly there is of course the research and drafting related work that is outsourced to LPO firms.

...On creating a balance between geographies because laws are different in different countries

A majority of the lawyers who work at Mindcrest come out of the Indian legal system and though as a company we do not purport to teach them US law, there are certain aspects that are similar in terms of the court system.

The US, UK and India follow the Common Law system and thus the principles of the legal system are pretty much the same though court structures and jurisdictions vary. LPO firms carry out extensive training for fresh recruits sensitizing them to specific skill sets in the laws and culture as well, because there is a vast difference in the ways legal jargon is used in different countries. For instance Indian legal writing tends to be more ornate as compared to the US which is more direct. Indian lawyers are pretty bright so we use that to our best benefit with a constant training and up gradation process. Also we have attorneys who have been trained in the UK or US system a and they act as mentors to our team here in India and help them understand certain nuances of the legal system of specific countries.

...On the challenges to LPO in India

Companies in this space need to be strong on two counts. Firstly they need to have strong and robust processes in place and continuously evolve their infrastructure to be able to attract, train and retain the right talent. For a lawyer who has come out of the conventional Indian bar practice, working with an LPO firm really widens his horizons and this needs to be put across in just that perspective.

Another major challenge is infrastructure, LPO firms work in a secure environment and confidentiality needs to be maintained. So building all that and then the ability to scale up is a challenge. There also is a great need for a strong business development in the target markets and companies who have a global presence can benefit best.

...On security concerns in legal process outsourcing

There are two aspects to security -- data security and physical security. Mindcrest has instituted very strict data and physical security plans and procedures to satisfy the requirements of their clients and to comply with data protection and privacy laws. We are also in the process of being certified by ISO 270001, which is the information security standard worldwide. We ensure a completely segregated networks even within the organization, no removable drives are available, our employees cannot save data on their desktops and everything is saved directly on the servers.

Also we have technology support to ensure the highest level of confidentiality. There are areas within our offices that have biometrics access only and only authorized personal have access to that area