Despite attorneys generally preferring to hire permanent staff, there are certain advantages to acquiring outsourced paralegal services to meet your law firm’s requirements for additional staff increased caseloads. It is a practical solution when your law firm’s caseload rises.
Some associated advantages include reducing costs such as payroll, office space, and benefits. Many leading law firms agree that outsourced or virtual paralegal services are immensely helpful, especially for large matters that demand temporary scaling.
Outsourced paralegal services can be useful not only for the firm but for the client as well. You get key benefits such as cost-effectiveness, access to external talent, shortened turnaround time, and flexibility.
One major decision that comes up when looking into outsourcing is
whether to choose onshore or offshore firms.
Offshore or Onshore
When making your decision, you should weigh the pros and cons of both onshore and offshore outsourcing, with cost-effectiveness being a major factor. For a long time, the trend was to offshore to countries like India because this option was much cheaper than onshore outsourcing.
However, recent spikes in foreign wage rates coupled with softened domestic labor markets in the U.S. have made onshore outsourcing an equally viable option.
In a survey report, Fronterion reported that domestic outsourcing companies charge an hourly rate of $25–30, while offshore providers charge $10–15 per hour. According to this trend, offshore remains the more cost-effective option when it comes to paralegal support outsourcing.
When Handling Outsourced Paralegal Services Providers:
1. Parallel Ethics:
One of the important things to keep in mind when weighing different providers is that your firm’s ethics should be parallel to those of the provider. The provider must complete all duties and tasks assigned to them ethically and legally.
Different legal outsourcing providers from different countries have different ideologies when it comes to ethics. So, you must ensure that your firm and your provider are on the same page and share aligned ethical standards.
A provider in Brazil or Turkey may not be aligned with the ethics that exist in the U.S. You need to be wary of this aspect and make sure the provider
meets U.S. ethical and regulatory expectations.
2. A Clearly Established Purview of Work:
Separate law firms often have their own definitions of what tasks fall under “paralegal” duties.To ensure that your firm and the provider are working in an aligned manner, you should clearly establish the exact scope and nature of work you require.
Evaluate the provider’s strengths and align them with your firm’s requirements.
3. Two-Way Communication Practice:
Establishing a two-way communication practice is the most efficient way to handle paralegals.
Hence, an experienced manager should be put in charge of the outsourced staff to ensure that this communication model is properly implemented.
The manager needs to be able to direct and support the outsourced staff while remaining open to feedback from them.
This will ensure that the law firm’s and the client’s interests are protected, even if the feedback provided is sensitive. You want communication between your firm and the outsourced staff to be as efficient as it is between your internal team members.
4. Constant Regulation:
The law firm must constantly oversee the work of outsourced paralegal services. The firm should assign a representative who continuously supervises their work and performance.
By constructing policies and procedures beforehand, the firm can streamline the management of work, set expectations clearly, and avoid communication errors.
If handled efficiently, outsourced paralegal services can be extremely beneficial in helping the firm achieve its goals. The aforementioned recommendations can help you manage the paralegal service provider in a manner that maximizes productivity.
To outsource paralegal support, reach out to Legal Support World. For a free consultation, email us at info@legalsupportworld.com.
