Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Khoj Badami

In an interesting trend reported in The Hindu today (link), Legal Process Outsourcers may be acting as the training ground, or farm teams, for domestic Indian law firms.

I suppose that this is not surprising as LPO work has two specific qualities that seem to facilitate this trend. First, U.S. and U.K. clients demand a higher level of quality in their LPO work product than is often required domestically in India, and second, LPOs have a natural glass ceiling insofar as the work sent to them still is focused on simpler, repetitive legal tasks.

The path within an LPO is not generally higher-level, better quality work and more client interaction, but instead is in process management and HR, two areas that are often not interesting to those with legal training.

In time, we will learn whether any Indian LPO can successfully leverage local talent to create a true international firm. Given the success of Indian outsourcers in other markets, however, it may not be too long a wait.