LPO Industry Drives 495% Revenue Growth in 2009 as it Responds to Increasing Legal...

LPO Industry Drives 495% Revenue Growth in 2009 as it Responds to Increasing
Legal Demands in Foreclosure and Bankruptcy Sectors

Economic, workforce and consumer trends indicate Legal Process Outsourcing is
a booming industry

SARASOTA, Fla., June 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) is one
of the fastest growing industries today. Despite an economic recession that is
causing most other industries to experience significant profit loss, LPO
continues to drive year-over-year triple-digit growth unseen since the dot com
boom of the nineties. AmStar Litigation Support, a Sarasota-based provider of
legal process outsourcing services, announced today that the company's growth
has been fueled by the economic decline.

Like most other businesses today, law firms are not immune to the recession.
However, firms practicing foreclosure defense and bankruptcy seem to have more
demand than they can manage. In the midst of a real estate crisis with more
than one million homes in foreclosure and a 41% rate of increase in bankruptcy
filings, law firms practicing in these two areas of law are turning to LPO to
support their rapidly growing caseloads and increase firm efficiencies.
According to Ken Rhodes, President of AmStar, "Economic factors are greatly
increasing the demand for professional legal work, and lawyers are turning to
legal process outsourcing as the most effective way to maintain higher levels
of production without compromising the needs of their clients."

Forrester Research, an independent technology and market research company has
forecast that the LPO industry will create as many as 79,000 jobs globally by
2015. Even a small fraction of the US Census Bureaus estimated $184 billion
in revenues generated by the US legal services industry would translate into
huge business growth and job creation for LPO providers. According to
ValueNotes, another independent market research company, revenues from LPO are
forecast to grow from $640 million in 2010 to $4 billion by 2015.

How LPO works
While law firms have outsourced various aspects of legal-related projects for
nearly a century, the American Bar Association issued Formal Opinion 08-451,
"Lawyer's Obligations When Outsourcing Legal and Nonlegal Support Services in
August 2008. According to Rhodes, LPO isn't much different from any other type
of outsourcing that has been practiced in the U.S. for decades. It involves
offloading time-consuming "chore work" to outside companies that can
competently do it for less money than handling it in house. Smaller law firms
are embracing LPO because it lets them control the cost of delivering their
services. Plus, according to Rhodes, outsourcing chore-work eliminates
administrative challenges from managing staff and enables them to achieve a
work-life balance. By implementing LPO in their practice, lawyers can manage
and track their business growth in a way that is scalable and inexpensive.

LPO-employed paralegals can competently handle more detailed work, greater
quantities of it, and in a shorter amount of time than typical paralegals.
This, according to Rhodes, is because each LPO paralegal is exposed to more
kinds of work than any one law firm would be exposed to. "One law firm may
only handle one or two or three types of cases. But LPO paralegals handle a
broad spectrum of cases and they are constantly exposed to the best practices,
the latest case theories, case laws and defenses," said Rhodes. "LPO
paralegals are constantly on the edge of what's new in the legal profession.
You don't find the same level of competence from someone you'd hire as a
member of your firm's staff."

When a firm hires an LPO company, it acquires paralegals who handle chore work
and services such as:
-- Case management (including gathering and reviewing documents as well
as
answering client questions)
-- Legal research
-- Medical records review
-- Billing management
-- Contract management
-- Expert witness services (experts who serve as witnesses and forensic
consultants in foreclosure matters, and who provide expert reports and
testimony for judges, attorneys and law firms in Federal and State
court
trials and arbitrations)
-- And many other time-consuming and expensive tasks, according to
Rhodes.

Reasons for LPO growth
More and more small and mid-size law firms are discovering the LPO benefits
that large firms have known about for years. Two reasons for the massive
growth of the LPO industry are the offerings of reduced costs and the
reductions in time-consuming inefficiencies inherent to the litigation
process. Expenses such as salaries, computer equipment and office space shrink
considerably, and many hours spent managing chore work are reduced. These
improvements result in lower hourly fees and fewer hours spent per case --
which leads to a third reason for the growing popularity of the LPO industry:
"Since projects are completed much quicker and clients spend less money on
attorney fees, firms using LPO outperform their competitors and see
significant boosts in their bottom-line performance," said Rhodes.

Choosing an LPO company
Rhodes maintains that not all LPO companies are the same. Firms should do
their homework before deciding which company to use. There are companies that
offer law firms the full gamut of services, and there are also companies that
only provide a limited range of services. He also recommends that firms
choose an LPO that offers a pay-as-you-go arrangement with no long-term
contracts and no strings attached. "Choose carefully," he said. "If it seems
like the arrangement is too high-maintenance or difficult to modify should
your needs change, trust your instincts and don't sign with them. An LPO
company should provide firms with adaptability, cost and time efficiencies,
convenience and most importantly, a better bottom-line performance. "

More information about AmStar Litigation Support can be found at
www.AmStarLitigation.com.

About AmStar
AmStar is a leading provider of legal process outsourcing (LPO) for small and
mid-size law firms that specialize in Foreclosure Defense, Bankruptcy and
other areas of Consumer Law. Our turnkey solutions help firms maximize
performance by giving attorneys access to scalable and cost-effective
services. These services include a team of certified paralegals, electronic
case management, forensic audits, legal research, live receptionists,
administrative support, billing services, innovative marketing and public
relations. For more information, please visit www.AmStarLitigation.com or call
877-550-5878.

If you would like more information about this topic, or to schedule an
interview with Ken Rhodes, please call Claudia Vitulich at 216/470-5500 or
e-mail at cvitulich@amstarlit.com .

Media Contact: Claudia Vitulich
AmStar Litigation Support
Direct Phone: 216/470-5500
E-mail: cvitulich@amstarlit.com
http://www.amstarlitigation.com

SOURCE AmStar Litigation Support

Claudia Vitulich of AmStar Litigation Support, +1-216-470-5500,
cvitulich@amstarlit.com