Blog
July 26, 2014

Legal Process Outsourcing : A positive trend for cross border business in Africa ?


Growth in international trade, globalization and capital flows between countries creates additional compliance challenges for businesses and lawyers engaged in cross border trade. This is further compounded on one hand by the current economic climate forcing businesses to review their legal spend, and lack of access to required information in certain unusual markets on the other hand. Law firms and businesses are therefore faced with the choice of either increasing their internal capacity to deal with this growing challenge and bear the resultant burden on their already strained budget among other costs, or to outsource some aspects of their legal process to third party professional skilled in the provision of these services.

What is outsourcing?
Legal Process Outsourcing  ( LPO)  is a developing trend in the legal industry worldwide. A sub set of Business Processing outsourcing (BPO) and Knowledge Processing outsourcing (KPO), LPO refers to the practice of contracting out an aspect of a legal process to a third party that specializes in the provision of this particular process or service. BPO  first gained momentum in the global north covering both domestic and foreign outsourcing, and has since spread to the rest of the globe.

Why outsource?
There are different reasons for businesses to consider outsourcing certain aspects of their process . Firms often outsource their non core activities in order to achieve organizational efficiency and budget flexibility by concentrating on their core competences. Other reasons include lack of resources, and increasing cost of hiring and maintaining specialized staff . And particularly for firms doing business in Africa,  outsourcing to a local service provider allows remote access to certain tacit information that may otherwise be inaccessible to foreign firms .

Outsourcing centers
Asia, and particularly India remain the biggest outsourcing center, and law firms and legal outsourcing agents in India are sought out by many businesses and law firms in the global north for both simple and complex legal process including court pleadings and appellate briefs. However, there are growing centers in Africa and Central America for similar outsourcing services buoyed largely by improved technological capacity, stable markets, and a sizable and well educated labour pool.

Future of LPO in Africa
Africa is rising. The continent continues to attract unprecedented flows annually in Foreign Direct Investments . As mentioned earlier, this ongoing trend presents  enormous regulatory and compliance challenges for businesses engaged in cross border trade in Africa. LPO ensures that SME’s can be more competitive by outsourcing their legal services at very reduced rate.  It is a great way for attorneys at firm level to manage not only their mundane activities, but also, other complex and time consuming activities whilst achieving comparative cost advantage.

Yetunde Onagoruwa is a principal at Olu Onagoruwa Legal Research Solutions (Pty) Ltd.

  1. Franc Swart says:

    Well articulated and informative piece, Lovely. I am sure we would enquire when we are ready to explore the Nigerian Market. Thanks

    • Yetunde Onagoruwa says:

      Dear Franc Swart,

      Thank you for your positive feedback. We look forward to hearing from you at the appropriate time.

  2. Mildred Mguyi says:

    Interesting read indeed, how does one enquire about your rates?

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