In-House Counsel

Global Legal Professional certification for offshore LPO staff

By Rees Morrison

Maya Karwande, then a rising senior at Tufts University, wrote a paper on Legal Process Outsourcing. that the blog Legally Yours published on July 19, 2008. You can learn about the Global Legal Professional certification from its website, but I quote from a portion of Karwande?s paper (four footnotes omitted).

?In April 2007 Rainmaker, recruitment and training firm that focuses on the LPO industry, introduced the Global Legal Professional (GLP) certification test. Designed in conjunction with three LPO companies: JuriMatrix, Bodhi Global, and Quislex, the GLP is aimed at testing candidates on skills needed in LPO: English fluency, technology and professional skills, personal effectiveness and legal knowledge. The first GLP was administered on September 16th, 2007 in the Indian cities of New Delhi, Bombay, Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad. The GLP website is explicit: ?The purpose of the GLP is clear and simple - to put in place a mechanism that enables the industry to identify the talent required to fuel the L.P.O revolution.? The website invites ?players? in the LPO industry to support and participate in the program by indicating their ?acceptance? of the GLP as a valid mechanism to certify industry talent. With participation, members of the LPO industry gain access to the talent pool, lower recruitment and training costs, and an ?auto-application process? that enables test takers to fast track their scores to preferred employers. This test may open up opportunities for the 80,000 lawyers that graduate from Indian law schools each year, and is pushing towards a standard of evaluation. Although reputable companies aided in the design of the test, the top companies of the industry were not involved. In order for a certification test have real relevance; a broader network of consultation and input from LPO companies will be necessary. In addition, it may be beneficial to involve the American Bar Association as a way to form a link between a business and legal solution.?

I thank Karwande for the description. General counsel will be more comfortable with LPOs and offshoring if they know that some quality control is operating, such as certification.

Full post as published by Law Department Management on February 22, 2009 (boomark / email).