Legal Outsourcer Gets $4M
Thrasher Remailer
legal market.
March 31, 2006
Pangea3, a company that focuses on providing outsourced legal
and patent support services, said Friday it has received a $4-
million second round of financing led by the GlenRock Group.
“The financing underscores the growing demand for outsourced
legal services as a solution to the spiraling costs of outside
legal counsel and related support work,” said Sanjay Kamlani, co-
CEO of Pangea3.
The New York and Mumbai, India-based company will use the funds
to recruit additional legal talent to ensure continued growth in
both the United States and India, and to expand its facilities
and offerings in both markets.
“Pangea3 is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the explosive
growth in the knowledge process outsourcing market," said Larry
Graev, chief executive of the GlenRock Group.
Pangea3’s services include litigation support and document
review, contract drafting and administration, patent drafting
and analysis, and legal and competitive intelligence research.
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Founded in 2004, Pangea3 currently employs 80 lawyers and
engineers at its Mumbai offices and seven people in the New York
office. Along with making additional hires at both locations,
Pangea3 plans to expand to another city in India by the end of
the year. The choice is between New Delhi, Bangalore, Pune, a
city close to Mumbai.
Pangea3 is not alone in the legal outsourcing space, though Mr.
Kamlani insists his firm is different. More than 50 firms offer
legal services to overseas customers from India, with employee
strength varying from 10 to 100.
The outsourced legal services industry in India employs about
1,800 people and earned revenue of around $61 million in 2005,
according to a study by ValueNotes, a research firm.
“The revenues of the legal services outsourcing industry in
India are expected to reach $0.6 billion by 2010 and cross $1.3
billion by 2015,” said the study.
Top Clients
Pangea3 has 45 clients based in the United States, United
Kingdom, and Japan. More than 15 of them are Fortune 100
companies, said Mr. Kamlani. The company counts Yahoo,
DirectoryM, Roamware, and Trico Marine Services among its
clients.
A study by the National Association of Software and Services
Companies (Nasscom), a support body for the software industry,
estimates the size of outsourceable legal services from the U.S.
alone at $3 billion to $4 billion.
“Though there is little hard data available to quantify the size
of the legal offshoring segment of the Indian BPO industry, it
is estimated that only about 2 to 3 percent [$60 million to $80
million] of the potential market has been tapped so far,” said a
2005 Nasscom report.
According to a 2003 report by Forrester Research, at least
12,000 legal jobs have been outsourced from the U.S. to offshore
locations through 2004. Forrester projects that about 35,000
U.S. lawyer jobs will move to low-cost countries such as India
by 2010 and the number will reach 79,000 by 2015.
The concept of outsourced legal services has existed since the
birth of independent law firms. Technological advances and
significant declines in telecommunications bandwidth costs have
fueled the rapid adoption of offshore IT-enabled services (ITES)
across several sectors.
According to Nasscom, a steady growth in demand for legal
services by corporations in developed countries has led to
increased levels of competition, coupled with a high cost of
service. That combination is pushing companies to explore more
efficient service delivery models.
As offshore outsourcing has now become a proven model, companies
are willing to go with the trend. The most apparent reason is
access to skilled managerial and technical resources at a
significant wage differential.
Indian lawyers typically draw just about 20 to 30 percent of the
salaries of their counterparts in the U.S. The time zone
difference also leads to a 24/7 operation, resulting in quicker
reports and research for customers.
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=16344&hed=Legal+Outsour
cer+Gets+%244M§or=Regions&subsector=Asia
taru...@gmail.com
player such as legal service India a delhi based law firm
(http://www.legalserviceindia.com) has finally started working on legal
research for US and Uk based law firms directly. without the
intervention of any third party agency.
another law firm doing a similar thing is the Kolkata base law firm
Guha & Sinha associates has also been providing legal outsourcing
services to its associates in england.
these are the two firms i had been invited to personally to see their
work.
Freelance Journalist