Abstract LPO (Legal Process Outsourcing) is currently one of the fastest growing industry as it provide low-cost and time saving services. This study aims to know about LPO, specifically its origin, the services it provide, its quality and satisfaction, its impact in the legal industry and its status nowadays. The theories related to the topic like Transaction Cost Theory and Value Chain Analysis are discussed in theoretical framework. In addition, this research uses descriptive type of design as a method. Finally, conclusions are formed based on the data collected from the instruments used relevant to the topic such as PDF’s, books, and articles from the internet.

CHAPTER I
Introduction
Legal industry operates in a global market place, and both clients and firms are seeking to understand how global outsourcing can add to their business. Lawyers have always outsource work to other lawyers with specialist knowledge. Firms are using their offices in other jurisdictions to do their legal work and offering that services to other firms. (The Law Society, 2011).
In the Philippines, Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) is one of the fastest growing sector in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry. Many LPO’s have out growth due to increasing demand for legal outsourcing and off shoring abroad. Various U.S law firms chooses Philippines because of its highly educated lawyers who are experts in their fields, high English proficiency, similar with the US legal systems, lower labour costs and strong information-technology orientation (HubPages Author, 2012). According to IBM Global Location Trends 2010 Annual Report, the Philippines have taken over the lead in the global ranking from India in business support functions (such as shared services and business process outsourcing).
However, at present India is the largest LPO destination. Like the U.S and U.K., India’s legal system is grounded in British common law. And, unlike China, which is emerging as off shoring center, English is the language of instruction in Indian colleges and law schools. India also boasts one of the largest pools of English-speaking graduates in the world. Labour cost is another major factor in sourcing work to India. In addition, India possesses a large, highly-qualified labour pool. Many Indian legal service vendors required a college degree as a bare minimum to employment. Most employees-even data entry workers-possess a graduate degree and most legal employees a low degree (Kane, S., 2014).
LPO is the fastest growing sub sector in the Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO). The revenue growth between 2010 and 2015 is expected to approximately 26%. LPO firms in India and the Philippines will generate approximately $300 million in 2010 and $960 million in 2015. Even during the economic recession of 2008 and 2009, the LPO sector grew by 40% in 2008 and in 2009; this is in stark contrast to the general KPO industry, which grew by only 5% each year during 2008 and 2009. Legal Outsourcing in U.S got a boost when the American Bar Association (ABA) came up with the Formal Ethics Opinion 08-451 in August 2008. In this widely publicised opinion, the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility stated that “The outsourcing trend is salutary one for our globalized economy” and went on to point out that “Outsourcing affords lawyers the ability to reduce their cost and often the cost to client” there by allowing law firms to better represent clients “effectively and efficiently” (Evalueserve, 2010).

Theoretical Framework
The concept to legal process outsourcing is based on the division of labour principles, prevalent in law firms, where various time consuming and onerous process like due diligence are delegated to paralegals, document reviewers or interns. This allows the firm to address various legal issues that arise on a daily basis while being able to streamline productivity. The process involves a contract due consideration between both firms. The values methods by which the process could be initiated are Direct Contract, The firm needing legal services directly approaches the legal process outsourcing vendor, Manage Outsourcing-where the firm establishes contract with LPO vendor, Required Outsourcing-occurs when the firm mandates a certain level of outsourcing in legal process(Nomosots,2010).
In the US, the American Bar Association (ABA) established the Commission on Ethics 20/20 to examine the ethical and regulatory impact of advancing technology and increasing globalization including outsourcing on the legal profession. In May 2011, the commission issued an initial draft proposal on outsourcing. The commission concluded that, although changes to the text of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct (MRPC) were not required, practitioners would benefit from appropriate “comments” to some of the rules to help more easily determined their ethical obligations. In September 2011, the commission released a revised proposal. The commission will formally file its outsourcing proposal to the ABA’s House of Delegates for their consideration in August 2012. In the UK, the Legal Services Board formally approved SRA’s long awaited new handbook in June 2011, which contained the most comprehensive guidance pertaining to LPO available to date. On October 13, 2011, the Law Society Issued a practice note offering practical guidance to practitioners considering entering into, or who have already entered into an outsourcing management. (Integreon,2012).
Michael Porter introduced the value chain analysis concept in his 1985 book ‘The Competitive Advantage’. Porter suggested that activities within organization add value to the service and products that the organization produces, and all these activities should be run at optimum level if the organization is to gain any real competitive advantage. If they are run efficiently the value obtained should exceed the cost of running them i.e. costumer should return to the organization and transact freely and willingly. Michael Porter suggested that the organization is split into primary activities and support activities (Learn Marketing .net, 2014).
As Rohan Sukhedo, head of Cognizant Technology’s LPO Market describes it ‘LPO allows for the “deskilling” of the legal industry-it’s about passing out legal task that might not justify law firm rates, but require more than mere administrative skills. Preparing first draft contract revisions based on playbook guidelines-is the good example of this.’ (Chicago Daily Bulletin, June 30, 2014).
“The benefits of LPO used to be labour costs arbitrage but has change overtime as LPO costs have risen especially has more demanding work is outsource. ISS has a long standing outsourcing relationship with a provider based in India and the services we receive continue to be of excellent quality. This is partly because our provider not only specializes the ‘process driven’ work but also aim work higher up the ‘value chain’ where real legal advice is delivered. In addition, they fortify their service by contributing innovative value-adding approaches to other parts of our business, for example by working with our new I.T based instruction system.”(Reade, R., UK General Counsel, 2011) According to Gartner, in 2008 approximately 76% of announced outsourcing contracts represented new deals, the remaining percentage was a combination of contract extensions, expansions, or renewals. Almost one-quarter of these contract were a continuation of outsourcing with an incumbent provider. Key providers area basically betting their future on forming enduring, long-lasting relationship. In uncertain economic times, outsourcing relationship can prove (and test) the durability of relationships and the outsourcing value proposition(W.C. Benton, Jr., 2010).

Statement of the Problem
This study aims to discuss how LPO operates in global market and how its vital role useful to law firms and businesses.
Particularly, this study focuses in these following questions: 1. Where has the Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) originated? 2. What is the current status of LPO? 3. What are the services being provided by Legal Process Outsourcing firms? 4. What is the quality and satisfaction in Legal Process Outsourcing? 5. What are the benefits in Legal Process Outsourcing? 6. What is the impact of LPO in legal industry?

Objectives of the Study The purpose of this study is to attain these following objectives: 1. To know where and how LPO started. 2. To know its status nowadays. 3. To know the services being provided by LPO firms. 4. To distinguish the quality and satisfaction in LPO. 5. To know the benefits in Legal Process Outsourcing. 6. To determine the impact of LPO in legal industry.

Scope and Limitation
This study covers about what and how LPO works. Specifically, this study focuses LPO on its current status, where it came from, what services are being provided by its firms and the quality and satisfaction in LPO. In the discussion, it also include why LPO becoming a fast growing industry and its impact in legal industry. Outside discussion that never mention above is no longer part of this study.

Significance of the Study Legal Process Outsourcing provide legal services to the law firms, business and legal industry. This study is important to our country, to our beloved school Leyte Normal University, to our co-students and to our group. To our group, this is important for us to gain more knowledge particularly Legal Process Outsourcing. We can use this knowledge in the future if ever we worked on legal industry or correlated to it. To our co-students, this study will provide them a useful source of information in their research paper related to Legal Outsourcing. To Leyte Normal University, the LNU administration can process legal documents, contracts and other papers that need legal services through legal outsourcing. To our country, this study is helpful especially to those who our planning to be a lawyer or already an attorney. They can use this as a guide for their work in legal industry. To our parents, this study can help them on how and who will help them process legal documents concerning their business or properties. For other people, this study is helpful to determine the process or flow of business in terms of legal services.

Definition of Terms
Law Firm – is a business entity formed by one or more lawyers to engage in the practice of law.
Paralegal – is a professional who has the required education and experience to perform substantive legal work for which a law firm or supervising attorney is ultimately responsible.
Offshoring - the practice of basing some of a company’s processes or services overseas, so as to take advantage of lower costs. Legal Service – the practice of law involves giving legal advice to clients, drafting legal documents for clients and representing clients in legal negotiations and count proceedings such as lawsuits and is applied to the professional services of a lawyers or attorney at law. Outsourcing – is an arrangement in which one company that could also be or usually have been provided in-house.
Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) – is the practice of law firm or corporation obtaining legal support services from outside law firms or legal support Services Company.
Legal Industry – this industry comprises offices of legal practitioners known as lawyers or attorneys primarily engaged in the practice of law.
Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) – a form of outsourcing in which knowledge and information-related worked is carried out by workers in a different company or by subsidiary of the same organization.
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) – is a subset of outsourcing that involve the contracting of and responsibilities of specific business functions (or processes) to a third party service provider.
Optical Character Recognition (OCRed) – the branch of computer science that involves the reading of text from papers and translating the images from into a form that a computer can manipulate.
Y2K Problem (Year 2000 Problem) – was a problem for digital (computer-related) and non-digital documentations and data storage situations which resulted from the practice of abbreviating a four digit year to two year digit year.

CHAPTER II
Review of Related Literature
Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) is the exporting of legal services to low-wage markets overseas. An increasing number of companies, large and small, are outsourcing legal work to destination across the globe (Kane, S., 2014). A. The Origin of Legal Process Outsourcing Transnational legal process outsourcing grew out of more general business and information technology outsourcing. Information technology outsourcing, especially to India, grew dramatically in 1990. Companies needed to retrofit their software to avoid the so-called “millennium bug “or “Y2K problem,” in order to avoid software failures from failing to program dates with a 4-digit year. United States companies ultimately spent around $100 billion preparing for Y2K. Given the huge expense of rewriting the software code, many companies have looked for ways to save money. India proved to have capable, low-cost programmers and software professionals, who could do the work quickly, and the growth of the internet and communication technology in the 1990’s made it possible to collaborate globally on software projects. As a result, Indian firms booked billions of dollars (Monjo, F., 2009). After the turn of the millennium, global outsourcing did not end—instead, it pick-up steam. The success of the Y2K efforts established a paradigm for international collaboration. It was a example of a “temporary economic that produces a permanent change” (Manjo, F., 2009). Based on the success of the software model, firms began sourcing other types of work to India. Technology firms in particular began to outsource more general business, seeing a growth in what was called “business process outsourcing” or “BPO” (Pandey, S., 2009).The “process” in the phrase refers to the idea “there is delegation of ‘control over the process’ which implies supplier becomes the ’the owner of the business process’ ”.Typical business process outsourcing might include payroll processing or employee benefits management. (http://www.soucingmag.com/content/what_is_bpo.asp(October1, 2014)) Soon, business began to offshore ever –more-complex process. Those requiring the greatest experience and skill were known as “knowledge process outsourcing” or “KPO”. So, for example while BPO might require a vendor to perform data entry of insurance claims forms, KPO might require the vendor to “evaluate new insurance applications based on a set of criteria or business rules”. Technology has brought outsourcing options even to specialized fields such as medicine (Gupta and Sao, 2011) and law. Legal process outsourcing, or “LPO,” arose from KPO and operates as a specialized form of KPO occurring in the legal field (Naha, 2007). It benefited from fortuitous timing and the intersections of two trends. Just as technological and business outsourcing grew in the past two decades, the legal field change the same time, as law firms and clients began to relay more and more on temporary and contract workers (Goldhaber, M., 1999). Legal work was increasingly outsourced onshore to staffing agencies or to specialized e-discovery agencies (Miller, A., 2009). Offshore outsourcing combined these trends, taking work that might have been given to a temporary attorney or an e-discovery vendor, and sending it to be performed abroad. B. Services Being Provided by Legal Process Outsourcing Firms
In December 2009, about 5,200 LPO professionals in India and Philippines providing the following services: Electronic Document Management services: according to the estimate of Evalueserve, 1,800 professionals were providing the following services. * Word processing creative design, legal transcription, legal coding, data digitisation, key word, XML tagging and archiving services * Research, tagging and summarisation services for updating legal databases(e.g., Lexis-Nexis, westlaw)
Electronic Documents Discovery Services: these include collecting, filtering, processing, and reviewing electronic records and scanned or OCRed (Optical Character Recognition) version of printed records) etc., for potential discovery in litigation. They estimate that 1,600 professionals were proving these services in December 2009.
Intellectual Property Services: these include the following services: * Higher-end (associated level) services including prior art searching, freedom-to-operate studies, overlap and evidence of use analysis, and landscaping with respect to patents and trademarks; they estimate that 700 professionals were proving these services in December 2009. * Paralegal services in IP, e.g., proofreading, and docketing and maintenance of patents, etc.; they estimate that 600 Indian professionals were providing these services in December 2009.
Associate Level LPO Services: As per their estimate, 500 professionals were proving the following services: * Using templates to produce preliminary drafting of pleadings, employee contracts, non-disclosure agreements, licensing agreements, supplier’s agreements, lease agreements, vendor agreements, and distributor agreements, etc. * Providing help with due-diligence services including reviewing non-disclosure agreements, supplier’s agreements, board resolution, and shareholders resolution. * Higher-end legal research, 50-state legal surveys (in the US), case law summarisation, etc. (Evalueserve,2011 ) C. Quality and Satisfaction in Legal Process Outsourcing Clients generally report satisfaction with their offshoring effort. Approximately seventy percent of outsourcing deals in general are renewed after the expiration of the first contract, suggesting that most outsourcing clients are satisfied both with offshoring practices in general, as well as satisfied with the particular vendors supplying the work (Christian, C., 2010). With regard to legal outsourcing in particular, a recent survey of offshoring clients-both corporation and law firms-reported that only 7.7% of U.S. law firms and 6.8% of corporation experienced “strong dissatisfaction” with their offshoring experiences (M2 PRESSWIRE, 2010). Thus, it seems likely that LPO clients will engage in ongoing outsourcing relationships as their counterparts in other industries have done. In general, companies report that LPO vendors provide high quality services. An attorney from Baker McKenzie conducted a comparison of first level document review at onshore and offshore locations, comparing cost, quality, learning curve and productivity. The attorney concluded that Indian LPO ranked better on cost, slightly worst on length of the learning curve and ranked comparably on quality and productivity (Birer, G., 2009). David Perla, co-founder of Pangea3, also had clients conduct “bake-offs” where they compared the results of document review completed by Indian attorneys in the U.S. contract attorneys. Clients found that the Indian teams “soundly trounced” the Americans (Lin, A., 2008). However, there are some reports of dissatisfaction. For example, one U.S. Company ended each practice of offshoring depositions summaries after it spent too much time changing British-English idioms into American English; the company reported that Indian employees “would use word like ‘fortnight’ (to describe a two-week period) and ‘bonnet’ (for the hood of a car)”. The company also found quality to be inconsistent, with some deposition summaries being excellent, and others being unacceptable (Pasternak, P., 2010). Others have noted that many LPO applicants may not have the precise technical and legal vocabulary to succeed in providing legal support services for western attorneys (Bhatia, S., 2010). Because of the possible risks of dissatisfaction, most LPO participants recommend the clients begin outsourcing on a small scale at first: “No matter how convinced a law firm is of the ability of an LPO to meet its efficiency and due-diligence standards, prudence dictates that it test the waters by sending out smaller jobs initially, and then graduate slowly to larger ones” (Ambale, R., 2009). LPO firms are also taking additional measures to reduce the dissatisfaction rate further, focusing on improving quality control by adding additional levels of review, improving training programs, and integrating teams of Indian and Western attorneys (Ghosh, S., 2010).
D. Benefits in Legal Process Outsourcing The largest (and most desired) benefit in legal process outsourcing is cost and time savings. One study suggested that the cost-saving could be anywhere from 30 to 80 percent, depending on the services. Indian based providers are the leaders of the offshore legal process outsourcing sector by sheer numbers, with more than 1 million lawyers and 128 legal process outsourcing providers exporting legal services worth $640 million in 2010(Hein and Manansingh, 2014). A second, though equally important, benefit of legal process outsourcing is that the services can be used on an as needed basis. Instead of relying on permanent staff, a law firm or in-house department may enlist help only during busier times and can be more easily have underperforming resources removed from a project, which, in turn, lead to additional cost savings (Hein and Manansingh, 2014). E. The Impact of LPO in the Legal Industry The legal outsourcing growth model is following the graph of BPO and ITO growth models. The trends of Legal Process Outsourcing to offshore service providers have changed the way legal industry functions. LPO is no more an option; it is the need of the hour. Highly prompt and fast communication, improved security levels and technological advancements have brought around this change. The legal industry has rapidly and efficiently accepted and adapted to this changed. LPO’s are equipped with the right tools, resources and have access to the latest technology and this has made them indispensible. This has empowered LPO’s to successfully help clients save a lot of money spent on overheads and in setting-up an in-house departed. Besides advanced technology and scalable infrastructure also allows LPO’s manage mounting document volumes easily, without compromising on the deadlines. This efficient and client centric approach has powered the growth of LPO’s, its clients and hence the legal industry (Pathak, P., 2014). F. Current Status of Legal Process Outsourcing Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) has seen tremendous growth in recent years. In the past five years, the growth of LPO finance sector has been at an annual rate of more than 30%. In the present scenario, the LPO industry is one among the fastest growing fields in the services sector (Steve, 2014).Cost savings and improving service levels are the key driving forces of the global LPO market. In addition, LPO allows law firms to focus their in-house workforce on higher value activities and outsource low value activities (Grand View Research, 2014). According to research conducted by knowledge process outsourcing firm Evalueserve, the global LPO industry employed over 5,200 professionals in the first quarter of 2010 with India and Philippines leading the pack with an estimated annual profit USD 300 million. Legal offshoring services are expected to employ 19,000 professionals and post annual revenue of USD 960 million by December of 2015 (http://www.LegisPro.com).

Further, the rising awareness among general counsel and general public is aiding the growth of this market. Moreover, increasing technology application such as offering highly serve enterprise class software including features such as portal website, collaboration, and document management market present an opportunity for vendor. E-discovery was the most popular platform being deployed in LPO industry while litigation support, intellectual property (IP) support, contract drafting and review are among other major services, being offered. Electronic documents contain a large amount of data and metadata and identifying and producing this information may often prove burdensome for in-house legal department. Outsourcing of this function helps by reducing efforts, reducing time consumption and proves to be cost-saving (Transparency Market Research, 2013).
Currently, India lawyers will generally charge $40-$60 an hour for work their American counterparts would normally bill at $120-$300. This produces an average savings of 30-70%, according associated chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM). The saving increases with the complexity of the job, leading to huge cost savings in patent research, intellectual property and other information technology sectors. A thankful CEO wrote to the LPO Company SDD Global, “Your group saved 90% and completed the work in less than half the time (Transparency Market Research, 2013).

CHAPTER III
Methodology
I. Research Design
This study uses a descriptive type of research design. Descriptive Research is design to “describe, rather than explain a set of conditions, characteristics, or attributes of people in a population based on measurement of sample (Alreck & Settle, 1985, p.408)”.Isaac and Michael (1981) contend that descriptive research is often use to describe existing phenomena, identify problems, or justify current conditions and practices. According to Babbie (1995), descriptive research “is probably the best method available to the social scientist interested in collecting original data for describing a population too large to observe directly”.
The descriptive research approach was chosen for this study because can help in understanding well Legal Process Outscourcing. II. Research Instrument
In order to gather the necessary information related to the study, the instruments that used were PDF files, books and articles from the internet.

CHAPTER IV
CONCLUSION
Based on the data gathered from different kinds of PDF’s, books, and articles in the internet, several conclusion are formed.
Legal Process Outsourcing first emerged in India during the year 1990. It provides services like: Electronic Document Management Services, Electronic Document Discovery Services, Intellectual Property Services and Associated Level LPO Services. Clients of legal process outsourcing stated that quality and satisfaction in LPO is high because only 7.7% of U.S. law firm and 6.8% of corporations experienced dissatisfaction with their offshoring experience and LPO provides quality service to its clients. There are different benefits of LPO, using legal process outsourcing clients can save cost up to 30 to 80 percent and the services can be used on an as needed basis. Legal process outsourcing has a large impact in legal industry, LPO improved security levels and technological advancement, legal process outsourcing rapidly accept and adopt this changes. The current position of legal process outsourcing in today’s economic status is the increase in employment and the annual profit especially of India and Philippines.

References
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Kane, S., 2014. Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO). Retrieved at http:// legalcareers.about.com/od/glossary/g/Legal-Process-Outsourcing-Lpo.html on September 28, 2014.
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Miller, A., 2009. “UPS’s Legal Department Brainstorms a Package Deal to Save a Parcel of SSS”. Retrieved at http://www.law.com on September 29, 2014.
Ambale, R. “What Do I Need to Join an LPO?” Retrieved at http://www.rosemary-outsourcing.blogspot.com/what-do-i-need-to-join-lpo.html on September 29, 2014.
Christian, C., 2010.”LPO Outsourcing Survey, the Orange Rag”. http://www.theorangerag.com on October 1, 2014.