Capita has for many years
been synonymous with business process outsourcing, but not in the legal services
sector. That is all set to change as it looks to enter the LPO market on the back of a successful pilot project
with Pinsent Masons (“Pinsent”). Given
Capita’s size and capital resources, the existing incumbents in that market
will doubtless be forced to sit up and take note.
Pinsent has recently been using a Capita office in Krakow to review documents in an e-disclosure exercise
for a large legal dispute. Capita
assembled a team of 85 individuals, whose work was overseen by Pinsent lawyers shipped out to Poland for the purpose,
in an attempt to drive down costs for the client (and presumably drive up
margins for Pinsent at the same time).
This is not the first time that Pinsent has used a legal process
outsourcer – it was one of the earlier pioneers of the practice - but it is the
first time that Capita has entered that arena as a provider.
From the
perspective of a law firm, outsourcing labour-intensive tasks such as
e-discovery offers not only the ability to carry out work in a lower cost
location, but also obviates the need to carry the fixed costs of large teams of
people who may not be fully utilised all of the time. In today’s tough market where many firms are
scrabbling to reduce fixed costs, this is a significant consideration.
Although
Capita will doubtless be hoping to receive more work from Pinsent, it appears
that the pilot was not designed with this particularly in mind – according to an
article in The Lawyer, Pinsent intends to decide which LPO provider to use on a
case-by-case basis rather than electing to partner with any one provider for
future projects. Nevertheless, Capita
are apparently sufficiently pleased with the way that the pilot went that they
plan to move aggressively into this new niche, competing with the likes of CPA
and Integreon.
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