Economic, workforce and consumer trends indicate Legal Process Outsourcing is a booming industry

SARASOTA, Fla., June 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) is one of the fastest growing industries today. Despite an economic recession that is causing most other industries to experience significant profit loss, LPO continues to drive year-over-year triple-digit growth unseen since the dot com boom of the nineties. AmStar Litigation Support, a Sarasota-based provider of legal process outsourcing services, announced today that the company's growth has been fueled by the economic decline.

Like most other businesses today, law firms are not immune to the recession. However, firms practicing foreclosure defense and bankruptcy seem to have more demand than they can manage. In the midst of a real estate crisis with more than one million homes in foreclosure and a 41% rate of increase in bankruptcy filings, law firms practicing in these two areas of law are turning to LPO to support their rapidly growing caseloads and increase firm efficiencies. According to Ken Rhodes, President of AmStar, "Economic factors are greatly increasing the demand for professional legal work, and lawyers are turning to legal process outsourcing as the most effective way to maintain higher levels of production without compromising the needs of their clients."

Forrester Research, an independent technology and market research company has forecast that the LPO industry will create as many as 79,000 jobs globally by 2015. Even a small fraction of the US Census Bureaus estimated $184 billion in revenues generated by the US legal services industry would translate into huge business growth and job creation for LPO providers. According to ValueNotes, another independent market research company, revenues from LPO are forecast to grow from $640 million in 2010 to $4 billion by 2015.

How LPO works

While law firms have outsourced various aspects of legal-related projects for nearly a century, the American Bar Association issued Formal Opinion 08-451, "Lawyer's Obligations When Outsourcing Legal and Nonlegal Support Services in August 2008. According to Rhodes, LPO isn't much different from any other type of outsourcing that has been practiced in the U.S. for decades. It involves offloading time-consuming "chore work" to outside companies that can competently do it for less money than handling it in house. Smaller law firms are embracing LPO because it lets them control the cost of delivering their services. Plus, according to Rhodes, outsourcing chore-work eliminates administrative challenges from managing staff and enables them to achieve a work-life balance. By implementing LPO in their practice, lawyers can manage and track their business growth in a way that is scalable and inexpensive.

LPO-employed paralegals can competently handle more detailed work, greater quantities of it, and in a shorter amount of time than typical paralegals. This, according to Rhodes, is because each LPO paralegal is exposed to more kinds of work than any one law firm would be exposed to. "One law firm may only handle one or two or three types of cases. But LPO paralegals handle a broad spectrum of cases and they are constantly exposed to the best practices, the latest case theories, case laws and defenses," said Rhodes. "LPO paralegals are constantly on the edge of what's new in the legal profession. You don't find the same level of competence from someone you'd hire as a member of your firm's staff."

When a firm hires an LPO company, it acquires paralegals who handle chore work and services such as:

• Case management (including gathering and reviewing documents as well as answering client questions)
• Legal research
• Medical records review
• Billing management
• Contract management
• Expert witness services (experts who serve as witnesses and forensic consultants in foreclosure matters, and who provide expert reports and testimony for judges, attorneys and law firms in Federal and State court trials and arbitrations)
• And many other time-consuming and expensive tasks, according to Rhodes.

Reasons for LPO growth

More and more small and mid-size law firms are discovering the LPO benefits that large firms have known about for years. Two reasons for the massive growth of the LPO industry are the offerings of reduced costs and the reductions in time-consuming inefficiencies inherent to the litigation process. Expenses such as salaries, computer equipment and office space shrink considerably, and many hours spent managing chore work are reduced. These improvements result in lower hourly fees and fewer hours spent per case -- which leads to a third reason for the growing popularity of the LPO industry: "Since projects are completed much quicker and clients spend less money on attorney fees, firms using LPO outperform their competitors and see significant boosts in their bottom-line performance," said Rhodes.

Choosing an LPO company

Rhodes maintains that not all LPO companies are the same. Firms should do their homework before deciding which company to use. There are companies that offer law firms the full gamut of services, and there are also companies that only provide a limited range of services. He also recommends that firms choose an LPO that offers a pay-as-you-go arrangement with no long-term contracts and no strings attached. "Choose carefully," he said. "If it seems like the arrangement is too high-maintenance or difficult to modify should your needs change, trust your instincts and don't sign with them. An LPO company should provide firms with adaptability, cost and time efficiencies, convenience and most importantly, a better bottom-line performance. "

More information about AmStar Litigation Support can be found at www.AmStarLitigation.com.

About AmStar

AmStar is a leading provider of legal process outsourcing (LPO) for small and mid-size law firms that specialize in Foreclosure Defense, Bankruptcy and other areas of Consumer Law. Our turnkey solutions help firms maximize performance by giving attorneys access to scalable and cost-effective services. These services include a team of certified paralegals, electronic case management, forensic audits, legal research, live receptionists, administrative support, billing services, innovative marketing and public relations. For more information, please visit www.AmStarLitigation.com or call 877-550-5878.

If you would like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with Ken Rhodes, please call Claudia Vitulich at 216/470-5500 or e-mail at cvitulich@amstarlit.com .

    Media Contact: Claudia Vitulich
    AmStar Litigation Support
    Direct Phone:  216/470-5500
    E-mail: cvitulich@amstarlit.com
    http://www.amstarlitigation.com

SOURCE AmStar Litigation Support

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