The aftermath of the pandemic will see a huge rise in the number of litigation cases. It’s time to be proactive and understand why you should outsource litigation support.
Are you ready for the litigation floodgates to open? As companies tentatively look to restart their businesses, there are myriad questions that need answering. From new working norms to flexible working, from the health and safety of staff and customers, to attracting new business. However, while business operations are rife with uncertainty, one thing is for sure; law firms and GCs are braced for an influx of litigation. This will include areas of personal concern such as wages, discrimination, and exposure to unsafe working conditions, as well as more operational litigation around lease agreements, supply chain breakdowns, and payment terms.
According to one law firm, while the courts and many law firms shut down during the pandemic, the pace of class action suits did not match, with more than 100 COVID-related class actions being filed in 30 days during April. This is reinforced by a secondary report that states more than 1,300 lawsuits were filed during May, with prisons, care homes, and large corporates the first to be on the receiving end.
Given the devastating impact of the pandemic on workforces across the world, it’s inevitable that people will seek ways to be compensated for the damage done. And, given the current shape of the global economy, this trend isn’t going to fall anytime soon.
Law firms and GCs are being advised to ready themselves for this onslaught by being proactive and positioning themselves to defend these suits. One of the best ways to achieve this is by outsourcing your litigation support.
Law firms and legal teams have proven over the past several months that performing legal tasks, such as document review, securely and effectively in a remote location – at home for example – is readily achievable. This has debunked the myths surrounding technical or logistical issues with outsourcing, empowering firms to start to take advantage of some of the multiple business benefits around litigation support outsourcing.
Outsource litigation support to increase your business agility
By outsourcing litigation support, smart law firms can work more flexibly, giving the lower-priced cases and laborious work to their outsourcing partner. This frees up attorneys to either take on additional higher value client work or offer more devoted time to existing clients and improve the counsel they receive. And it’s not just attorneys that can be freed up for new, higher-value work. Paralegals and admin staff can also benefit to help the overall efficient running of the practice or team, and increase overall productivity.
Outsource litigation support & find the expertise you need
Litigation outsourcing brings in a raft of specialist expertise that may not be financially viable to maintain in-house. By outsourcing, you have a team on-hand who not only has the experience and expertise to handle your cases, but that is dedicated to helping you, whether that’s on discovery, technology set-up, or cataloging documents. By selecting a firm with the highest credentials, you can be assured of the accuracy of the work completed. Also, should any of your cases require niche knowledge, your outsourcing partner will likely have someone on staff who can help, saving you recruitment or hiring costs and ensuring your client gets the skills they need for the case.
Lower your costs
Supporting an entire team of litigation experts and support staff is costly, training and recruitment alone are a huge financial burden for many firms. This is before eDiscovery tools and database costs are taken into consideration – costs that often need constantly increasing due to technology upgrades. By outsourcing your litigation support, these costs become scalable – up and down – as required, so law firms and legal departments are unshackled from the constant financial burden of an in-house litigation team. Working with Imperial Logistics on due diligence for a large M&A deal, for example, we were able to quickly scale up to meet their urgent needs and cut the timeline for the deal by half, saving the company 75% on the overall cost of the due diligence.
Ensure expense recovery
Litigation outsourcing is already increasing within many law firms, according to one study. The reason is that many law firms are struggling to recover their expenses on data storage and information security. Since the onset of data regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, and POPI, the cost of ensuring the security of client data has increased, but many clients are refusing to pay these costs. Law firms are taking a direct hit on costs from data processing and hosting, costs that could be more digestible to clients if coming from a third party. According to the survey, clients are more willing to pay these costs from an outsourcing provider because they value the expertise. In fact, according to the survey, 46% cited expense recovery from clients as a key driver for outsourcing litigation support.
Accelerate your time to case conclusion
Internal teams are working on multiple cases and have internal politics and tasks to contend with. A litigation outsourcing specialist would be dedicated to your cases and have staff and resources that could scale to meet your needs. Quick turnaround of documents and briefs, and meeting court deadlines means cases could be concluded more quickly, saving valuable lawyer or GC time, and freeing them up to take on additional higher value or more strategic work.
As we all look forward to entering the new world of work, law firms and GCs should act now to mitigate their litigation risk, and ready themselves for the flurry of cases. By outsourcing their litigation support, the smart law firms and GCs are arming themselves with the resources, expertise, and agility to navigate the storm and emerge stronger on the other side.
Contact us to find out more about why you should outsource litigation support & how Exigent can help your business transition successfully into the new normal.
