By Jeff Fehrman
New Recent advances in litigation support technology now make it more feasible than ever to preserve, assess, and produce electronically stored information from backup tapes. Why is this important? Because no longer is it necessary to recreate complex backup environments or utilize tedious and costly manual processes to restore data from backup tapes. Now you can quickly identify and extract just the relevant data required for court or regulatory requests. In this new white paper from Integreon’s ESI expert Jeff Fehrman, results are compared from two actual tape discovery projects in which his team utilized different technologies for the same set of backup tapes. The findings are a “wake-up call” for litigation support professionals and e-discovery technologists.
By Mark Ross
New LLRX.com recently published a white paper, Ethics of Legal Outsourcing (February 14, 2010), authored by Integreon’s Mark Ross. The paper examines the ethical and practical realities of legal process outsourcing in the US and UK, particularly with regard to the offshoring of core legal and support services to countries such as India, South Africa and The Philippines. Included are citations of key bar and bar regulatory authority opinions on legal outsourcing, such as from the American Bar Association, which provide guidance on acceptable practices for firms that wish to ethically utilize outsourcing strategies to enhance value for their clients. Ross discusses such pertinent topics as:
- Avoiding aiding and abetting the unauthorized practice of law
- Competent representation
- The duty to disclose
- Protecting client confidences and secrets
- Avoiding conflicts of interest
- Billing for outsourced legal support
- Malpractice insurance and LPO errors and omissions
- Export control regulations
- UK specific concerns, including data protection export issues
A shortened version of this white paper was also published in the San Francisco Daily Journal (Legal Outsourcing: Ethical Compliance, February 9, 2010).
By Mark Ross
New The Lawyers Competitive Edge recently published, The Legal Profession: A Final Frontier for Knowledge Process Outsourcing (January 2010, by Integreon’s Mark Ross), which describes the emergence and rapid growth of knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) within the legal profession. Ross, who is vice-president of legal services at Integreon, explains that one of the key drivers in the growth of Legal KPO, a.k.a. legal process outsourcing (LPO), has been advancement in technology. According to Ross, technological advances in process management and connectivity now enable increasingly complex legal tasks to be performed without a reliance on the immediate proximity of talent. Ross states that with today’s technology, ”it matters little whether your secretary, junior associate or paralegal is ten feet down the corridor or 7000 miles away.” But the work is not all going offshore, as he stresses that there are substantial legal outsourcing engagements occurring onshore in the U.S. and U.K. as well. As the Legal KPO industry continues to mature, Ross says that important differentiators for the leading Legal KPO providers will be scalability and multiple service capability; and that with continuing exponential growth in electronically stored information, having the technology infrastructure to offer an end-to-end solution to the electronic discovery process (collection, processing, hosting and review of electronic data), which Integreon does today, will become increasingly desirable to both law firms and legal departments.
By Bar&Bench News Network
The LPO market in India received a boost last week with the signing of the outsourcing agreement between the UK-based international firm, Simmons & Simmons and LPO leader, Integreon. Bar & Bench speaks to Mark Dawkins, Managing Partner at Simmons & Simmons and Lokendra Tomar, Chief of Operations of the Asia-Pacific arm of Integreon. While Mark Dawkins refused to be drawn on whether the firm has any India-specific expansion plans, Lokendra Tomar reveals Integreon’s plans to raise funds through private equity to further its expansion plans.
By Free Pint Limited and Integreon
FreePint recently published the results of a new benchmarking survey on outsourcing: VIP Report: Survey on Outsourcing. Integreon and FreePint jointly designed a survey to assess industry perceptions about the importance of outsourcing, barriers to adoption, and the satisfaction level of organizations that currently practice outsourcing. You can read about some of the key findings from the survey in our recent blog post, Survey Shows it’s Time to Take a Fresh Look at Knowledge and Information Services Outsourcing. Integreon is also making available a free copy of the report; click here if you would like to request a copy.
By Aberdeen Group
Aberdeen Group recently published Partnering for Performance: Knowledge Process Outsourcing. This report explains how companies have improved operations and profits by migrating high-end, knowledge intensive work to the right outsourcing provider. In a recent blog post, How Best in Class Companies Benefit from Effective Knowledge Process Outsourcing, Integreon summarizes key findings from the Aberdeen report and then we share our perspective as an integrated KPO provider. Integreon is also making available a free copy of this report; click here if you would like to request a copy.
By Ron Friedmann and Jeff Davis
Law firms large and small need extensive business research to pitch new business and to serve existing clients effectively. The explosion in demand for business research strains the resources of most firms: law librarians have too much legal research as it is and marketing departments need to focus on relationship building. Rather than add more staff, firms find that outsourcing business research provides what they need at lower cost and with better turn around times.
By Ron Friedmann and Renay Rutter
This article was first published in September - October 2008 issue of the Association of Legal Administrators’s Legal Management magazine, Dealing with Documents: The Pros and Cons of Outsourcing (PDF). Abstract: Renay and Ron examine how outsourcing document processing can slash payroll and facilities costs, reduce turnaround times, and boost in-house secretarial careers. They also explain the pivotal role of law firm administrators in assessing outsourcing options and planning the transition to outsourced services.
By Ron Friedmann
This article was first published by LLRX.com, 1 Sept 2008. Abstract: Outsourcing is one way firms can both reduce cost and improve service. Though already common, outsourcing still has tremendous potential to reduce costs further and to improve operating efficiency. This articles reviews the history of and logic behind legal outsourcing and explores some current legal outsourcing options.
By Jeff Davis
Outsourcing has fundamentally affected the information industry in the UK. This article explores the two distinct models have emerged at this point: core research support offshore and onshore/offshore hybrid.