Thomson Reuters Acquires Pangea3
It was announced today that Thomson Reuters acquired Pangea3, “one of the largest legal outsourcing services company in India.”
Legal outsourcing services companies – otherwise known as “legal process outsourcing,” or LPO – are fairly new. LPOs involve law firms (and companies) hiring companies in India, the Philippines and elsewhere to carry out voluminous documentary review and other legal work, at cheaper cost. Some thought the trend was a fad, but with today’s development, it looks like LPOs are here to stay.
What will the impact be on practicing law in Canada? There will still be demand for the best litigators and corporate lawyers. But big law firms may be forced to revisit the trend towards staffing heavy document-intensive cases with large numbers of associates and students if the same work can be done for a fraction of the cost by overseas outsourcing companies like Pangea3. As Mitch Kowalski noted in today’s Legal Post Blog,law firms that do not have a well-thought business answer to LPOs may soon be “out of business.”
well, one thing that the legal, financial, educational, and news information giant, Thomson Reuters, has not been accused of is ignorance. Given that this multi-billion-dollar company has acquired 100% of the shares of an Indian legal outsourcing provider, after also recently deciding, for “strategic” reasons, to sell its profitable and high-profile U.S. bar exam preparation course (BAR/BRI), you can assume that some very smart money is betting on a tectonic shift in the Western legal landscape.