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w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m A p r i l 2 0 1 4 39 LEgaL rEport/legal pRocess ouTsouRcIng It's not rocket science Once a ripple, legal process outsourcing is now a tsunami of change. by ian harvey s helby Austin, the founder of ADT Legal Services Pro- fessional Corp., was dev- astated when she wasn't invited to speak at a legal process outsourcing conference a few years ago. "I thought it was a huge oversight and I didn't know how I was going to recover," she says. "Here I was, launching one of the first LPO in Can- ada and I wasn't invited." She had the last laugh, however: The conference was cancelled for lack of interest and she's just sold her firm to Deloitte. "Of course, today, these confer- ences are jam-packed," she says. "We're like the little engine that could. And now we're part of a very big train in just four years. It's been a wild ride." Like it or not, legal process outsourcing has arrived and the ripples that first crept across Bay Street are now a tsunami of dis- ruptive digital change. In tough economic times fewer clients are willing to splash out $400, $500, or $1,000 an hour when they can get work done for a tenth of that. While e-discovery was the centerpiece of outsourcing initially, it has spread to the mundane, day-in-day-out work such as due diligence, supplemental requests for information, litigation support, leasing, contracts, and M&As. Gavin Birer, who opened Legalwise Outsourcing Inc. in Markham, Ont., in 2007 when many of the U.S. LPOs were also first launching, remembers the skepti- cism with a smile: "We got a lot of 'it's a great idea but we'll never do it.' Today some of those lawyers are our best clients." The momentum continues to shift, he says, with more low-value, high-vol- ume work being passed to LPOs. "The e-discoveries, large due diligence files, large lease portfolios — and there's a lot of volume and repetition in that type of work. Corporate clients are seeing an alternate way of doing this rather than send it to a large law firm." Attitudes are changing, albeit slowly. The bulk of business remains direct from corporate entities though there are increasing inquiries from law firms, he says, and other firms are partnering with LPOs on requests for proposals. "Some firms don't get it and don't think they need to but others are open to it but not quite there in terms of embracing it," says Birer, who has about 35 lawyers in India and focuses entirely on the Can- adian market, dealing with companies headquartered in Ontario. McCarthy Tétrault LLP is one firm that gets it. It recently launched Matt daley

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