Leah Cooper is responsible for leading the company’s legal services outsourcing solutions, and the growing portfolio of corporate and law firm clients in this area.

Prior to her move to CPA Global in March 2010, Leah was Managing Attorney and General Counsel EMEA at the multinational mining corporation Rio Tinto.

ValueNotes: After overcoming the initial outsourcing hurdles, what new challenges have you begun to face? What steps have been taken to overcome them?
Leah Cooper: Demand for CPA Global’s services is rapidly increasing and, from an operations perspective, our greatest challenge is keeping up with the work we are receiving while continuing to hire and train the best lawyers possible. We look at this as a positive challenge, however.  

The legal industry’s view of legal process outsourcing is changing. Having worked as a general counsel and a consumer of legal outsourcing in the past, I can vouch for the advantages that it brings. I now have the opportunity to share my experiences firsthand, and those considering using an outsourcing provider are always keen to hear an unbiased account of how this rapidly emerging legal model works.

ValueNotes: What new strategies, if any, are being used to maintain healthy client relationships whilst attracting new clients?
Leah Cooper: Keeping an open and honest channel of communication with our clients is the key. We are always keen to learn from them and keep up with new developments in their business, so that we can continue to deliver high quality results and meet their expectations. Additionally, we encourage clients to visit our delivery centers regularly and train the teams of lawyers they work with. This helps to build strong working relationships and develop a sense of our lawyers forming a part of clients’ in-house teams.

ValueNotes: What are the services / sub-services that current and future clients are looking to outsource?
Leah Cooper: ‘LPO’ is a new concept to a lot of clients when they start working with us, and some can be hesitant about which services to outsource to begin with. Services that we typically take on for our clients include litigation support, legal research, transaction support, M&A activity, due diligence and IP outsourcing. Earning a new client’s trust can sometimes take a while, which explains why the services we initially provide can be low value. However, our experience shows that, with time, the scope of work that clients outsource to us begins to expand to include higher value and more complex projects. We prefer to describe this more sophisticated work as legal services outsourcing (LSO), rather than legal process outsourcing.

ValueNotes: What determinants are needed for growth of the legal process outsourcing industry over the next five years? What additional factors do you see coming into play with time?
Leah Cooper: Quality work will lead to confidence in the industry. Although LPO providers are a cheaper alternative to using outside counsel for low level legal work, quality of service will continue to dictate the speed of industry growth. The cost savings and high quality of work that some corporates have seen through working with outsourcing providers like CPA Global in recent years, have forced general counsel to become better business people and spend considerable time evaluating which of their legal services providers should be undertaking particular types of work for them.

ValueNotes: Will competition from the Philippines, Australia and various other outsourcing destinations force Indian vendors to develop new approaches to remain competitive?
Leah Cooper: Although competition and new competitive cost models will be offered by a range of countries in the future, quality is what really matters. Although cost is a factor, the quality of work delivered to clients will dictate the future of the LPO industry. If India continues to deliver the best quality, it will continue to remain competitive.

ValueNotes: How do you propose India will deliver the best quality – what advantage does it have in ensuring quality, compared to other countries?
Leah Cooper: India is home to a huge pool of talented lawyers who are able to benefit greatly from the international exposure that the LPO industry can bring. Indian law schools produce more than 80,000 graduates each year, and it is critical that the level of education provided by these institutions rivals that of other countries where LPO delivery is growing, for India to stay ahead.

ValueNotes: How do you see the legal process outsourcing model evolving? What would you consider the advantages or disadvantages of this evolution?
Leah Cooper: The LPO model will continue to develop and evolve until outsourcing providers are widely established as an extension of their clients’ in-house legal teams, and law firms acknowledge that legal process outsourcing is here to stay. An increasing number of corporates are promoting the use of LPO providers nowadays, not as the result of the recent global recession, but as a result of LPO providers presenting themselves as a viable alternative to some of the services provided by outside counsel.

ValueNotes: In the recent past, LPOs in India have been hiring qualified lawyers from the West. What do you think is the reason behind this trend?
Leah Cooper: Quality management is one element that foreign attorneys bring to the table, and the Western lawyers that CPA Global has recruited to work in India are primarily responsible for mentoring and training our Indian team to ensure this. The introduction of a small team of lawyers from Western jurisdictions has helped provide CPA Global’s Indian team with a clearer understanding of how our clients work and think, and our clients take comfort in the fact that the work they receive would be at a level consistent with the quality they expect.

ValueNotes: Is this hiring pattern important for the growth of the LPO industry?
Leah Cooper: Yes, this hiring pattern is crucial for industry growth. By recruiting lawyers from the US, UK and Australia, our team in India has the level of training and support needed to deal with the increasing complexity of work that we receive from our multinational clients.

About Ms. Leah Cooper

Leah has a law degree from the Fredric G. Levin College of Law at the University of Florida, a Master of Arts in Communications Law from the University of Florida, as well as a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Georgia. She is a member of the Florida Bar.

In 2006, Leah was instrumental in founding the Pro Bono Partnership of Atlanta, a non-profit organization, designed to provide free legal services to other charitable non-profit organizations.