LPO (Legal Process Outsourcing) and Document Review

Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) is an industry thatobjective is to reduce the document set into a
has been growing rapidly in the recent year andworkable and responsive data set. Even though the
involves outsourcing of legal works by the legale-discovery best practices have reduced a data set
communities of the developed countries like the US toby almost 70% there still may remain millions of
lower wage developing countries like India.documents to be reviewed. This is because the total
LPO usually involves processes like Legal Research,quantity of documents has multiplied several times
Document Drafting, legal contracts, agreements, clientover the years. In the second level these workable
letters, patent applications and various other Intellectualdocuments are reviewed more seriously by seniors.
Property research and Paralegal Services.As legal document review forms the major part of
LPO is increasingly being preferred these dayslitigation expenses today law firms are trying out all
because it has become a time consuming andmethods to reduce the cost of litigation and
expensive process, mainly triggered by data explosion,outsourcing of e-discovery is a viable solution. During
technological evolution, and the sudden increase inthe document review process quite often millions of
electronic stored information. One cannot also denydocuments have to be searched and identified for
the fact that US practices lack consistent teams to- Case relevance
perform document review work.- Confidentiality
Document review in the context of litigation is done in- Privileged /protection
two levels. The first level of document review is the- "key or "hot" status
discovery phase and first part in any litigation. ThisBesides in litigation, document review is also performed
process is performed after receiving the legal "requestin matters of regulatory compliance and corporate due
for production of documents". During this process thediligence.