Legal process outsourcing (LPO) firms in developing countries expect to make some gains from the current global downturn.
As companies in Europe and the US cut functional costs, they are most likely to lay off in-house or salaried lawyers, and outsource routine legal activities to low cost economies, said sources in the LPO industry here.
Middle or lower end work could be pushed to countries like India.
A top source in a leading LPO working in the areas of compliance and support services dealing mainly with American corporates, said that it was now getting work in the area of registration related formalities for European Union's (EU) REACH legislation.
REACH (registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemical substances) requires manufacturers and importers of chemicals in the EU to register information on the properties of their chemical substances that allows their safe handling in a central database run by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) in Helsinki, Finland.
"Work that would have otherwise gone to some law firm in the EU is now coming to us", confirmed Indranil Choudhury, director, Lexplosion Outsourcing Ltd. His firm worked in the area of business-to-business contract drafting, and due-dilligence research.
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Some of the other firms, however, also pointed out on grounds of anonymity that while the existing assignments were not affected, companies in the West were taking more time before sending fresh assignments.
"All decisions were now a part of measures taken to operationalise a lower cost regime. Companies could defer decisions by a quarter or so", warned another source in a city-based LPO.
"If we were expecting to get six clients during the quarter, we have managed around two", this source added.