What Is Legal Process Outsourcing? A Plain-English Guide

Legal process outsourcing, usually shortened to LPO, means a law firm or in-house legal team gives defined, repeatable legal work to an external team instead of absorbing it internally. The external team researches, summarises, drafts and reviews. The firm keeps the client relationship, every judgement call and the signature.

What is actually outsourced

The work that travels well is document-driven and rule-driven: reading a record and turning it into a chronology, surveying case law and writing it up as a memorandum, summarising a transcript, coding documents for responsiveness and privilege, abstracting a contract portfolio into a register. None of it requires an appearance, and none of it requires advising the client.

What is never outsourced

Legal advice, strategy, the decision to file, the final privilege call and the signature stay with admitted counsel. A provider that offers to make those calls is describing a law firm, not an LPO. OASIS is not a law firm; every deliverable we produce is prepared for a qualified professional to review, adopt and sign.

Why firms use it

Three reasons come up repeatedly. Capacity: record review and summarising expand without warning, and hiring against a spike is expensive. Cost: work billed at a paralegal rate internally can often be produced for less externally without touching quality. Focus: senior time is better spent on argument and negotiation than on paginating exhibits.

What good LPO looks like in practice

The mechanics matter more than the marketing. Ask what the deliverable looks like before you engage, and ask for a sample. Ask whether every factual statement carries a source page reference. Ask who reviews the work before it reaches you, and how many rounds of internal review it passes through. Ask how files are transferred and how long they are retained. Ask what happens when the work comes back wrong.

Our own answers are documented rather than improvised: a nine-stage engagement process, dual verification of research, two internal review rounds before delivery and one included revision round. You can read the whole journey on how we work, and the confidentiality position on security and confidentiality.

Where to start

Most firms start with one narrow, high-volume task — usually medical chronologies or deposition summaries — on a single live matter, then widen once the template fits. The eight service lines we support are listed on the legal process outsourcing hub.