There is a growing trend internationally to outsource lower end legal work, freeing up lawyers to focus on their core business – the law. Electronic discovery is one exercise where parts of the process can be outsourced to more efficient and cheaper options.

Last week, the NZ Lawyer magazine published an article of mine entitled The rise of Legal Process Outsourcing (A link to the article can be found here).  The article looks at the justification for law firms and organisations to look to outsource parts of the electronic discovery process.

Do what you do best, outsource the rest

One of the main themes of the article posed the question for law firms are these non-legal tasks are the best use of their legal expertise? Much of the e-discovery process is technical or process driven and does not need to be carried out by lawyers.

The key drivers to embrace an outsourcing model can be – 

• Growing pressures to reduce the cost of litigation
• The challenges created by the complexity of the technology and the volumes of data
  • Do you have the in-house technology and does your internal resource have the expertise?
  • Do you want the risk?
• Acquiring a competitive advantage over other firms

“managing e-discovery in-house is becoming too burdensome, complicated and costly”

These considerations are reinforced by some of the points I made at the conclusion of the article –

The adoption of more innovative technologies in conjunction with outsourcing parts of the e-discovery process can help provide cheaper and more efficient legal services.

Legal outsourcing will not be right for every organisation or every situation, however leveraging the expertise of specialists to conduct parts of the discovery process can deliver more efficient and cost effective services.

The important message is that outsourcing parts of the discovery process can also help law firms focus on what they do best – the practice of law.