More and more industries are finding that outsourcing or delegation is the next big development in their fields.
With costs to keeping all parts of business processes in-house rising, companies are finding that delegation to outside companies with experience and expertise is a natural solution.
One of the fastest growing fields in delegation is in legal services, where law firms and corporations are now trying to manage costs by obtaining legal support from outside.
The legal process is filled with tasks that are repetitive and process-driven, like contract reviews or the discovery phase in litigation. Many of these tasks do not actually require a senior lawyer or a partner, and especially not for the amount of time required for the large volume of documents to sift through.
When that’s the case, firms are now turning to legal process companies like Johnson Hana, an Irish firm founded by Dan Fox. The company takes on tasks that require some level of legal expertise but also necessitate long hours and plenty of repetition. His clients, typically larger law firms, find they can reduce costs considerably by delegating to Fox’s company instead of accomplishing the tasks with their own teams.
Additionally, that also opens up their own people to take on more challenging work, or those that require the attention of their higher-level lawyers.
Taking it a step further, some of these bigger law firms are now doing similar. But instead of delegating, firms in Australia are now taking on delegation work, with their client being the Australian government itself.
The Australian Treasury has recently began delegating the drafting of legislation to the private sector. That was a task that used to belong exclusively to the Office of Parliamentary Counsel.
The goal is to speed up the process, breaking free from government bureaucracy. It also seeks to lighten the load off of the OPC. The office has a staff of about 100, with only 45 of those legislative drafters, but in 2017, dealt with 230 individual pieces of legislation and more than 830 amendments.
Treasury officials, though, said that the drafting of legislation by law firms would be a case by case decision. Criteria would be only new legislation – none that began in the OPC – and nothing that would make “consequential changes” to other laws.
The law profession is embracing delegation. And that is helping the entire industry, from the highest levels down to lowest.
If you think your company can benefit from delegation, consult with us at TukkoLabs to learn more about the services that can help your operations.
SOURCES:
“Rising Star Of Legal Outsourcing Services.” Irish Times, 24 August 2018, Web.
“Treasury Outsources Legislation Drafting To Law Firms.” The Australian Financial Review, 12 April 2018, Web.
https://www.afr.com/business/legal/treasury-trial-outsources-legal-drafting-20180409-h0yivw