India's Legal Process Outsourcing business to grow 7% by 2010

New Delhi, May 15 (UNI) India is set to achieve significant growth from its current share of 3-4 per cent to 6-7 per cent in the 250 billion dollar global market of Legal Process Outsourcing, by 2010.

According to the BPO Council of the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASSOCHAM), more than 200 top US companies alone are looking for offshore locations towards achieving saving of 30-70 per cent.

The Chamber says, ''India is already known for its large and increasing pool of quality engineering graduates, many of who are being attracted to the patent services segment of legal BPO.'' Estimates report that by early 2006, there were over 400 professionals engaged in providing patent services such as literature searches, prior-art searches, technology and patentability assessment, patent claim mapping, etc, from India.

There are over 600 patent agents registered with the Indian Patent Office in India and about 300 Intellectual Property professionals who are non-regietered.

About one-third of these 900 professionals currently provide patent services to European and American end clients, and this number is likely to double to 1,800-2,000 by 2010.

ASSOCHAM President Anil K Agarwal, while releasing the Paper said, the conservative estimates of the current addressable market potential for legal services, outsource-able from the US alone are pegged at 3-4 billion dollars.

This comprises paralegal and research support, contract drafting and revising and contract management, library services, patent and trademark prosecution and litigation support, he said.

Major countries providing legal services market include USA, UK, France, Australia, South Korea, Japan and China.

The paper, however, says that despite the encouraging prediction regarding outsourcing, legal practices are subject to a number of external forces affecting all law firms which include changing economics, marketplace maturation, earning brand, marketing expenditures etc.

Offshore outsourcing of patent prosecution is also increasing.

Patent applications and litigation support are the two areas of focus for offshore legal outsourcing to India, New Zealand, South Africa and other English-speaking, low-labour cost locations around the world.

Much of this outsourcing is occurring directly from corporations, many of which have in-house legal and patent departments. Much of the patent application process is deemed by clients to be commodity in nature, with only the claims portion of the patent application requiring real US patent law expertise.

Offshore outsourcing is resulting in fees averaging as little as 2,000 dollars per application, as opposed to law firm fees of 8,000 dollars to 12,000 dollars for those same applications, performed by a US patent law firm.

UNI RA CS BST1726