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Force for change?

04 August 2017 / Ben Fielding
Issue: 7757 / Categories: Features , Profession
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Is legislative change contributing to a demand for outsourced document review & compliance services? Ben Fielding

The unbundling of legal services has been the subject of much debate ever since the first instances of legal outsourcing were documented. However, while drivers in the past have been cost savings made possible by technological advances, recent legislative changes look set to increase the demand for outsourced document review and compliance services.

Traditional document review is a classic example of legal process outsourcing. Typically law firms and corporations reach out to external providers because of time pressures, the need for teams of multilingual lawyers to be assembled at short notice and cost savings. Projects like this are arranged reactively and although project management and forensic data collection is important, the document review task is linear and short term.

However, two major changes to legislation are about to be implemented that are already changing the way companies and in-house counsel are using resources such as document review lawyers, ediscovery vendors and project managers.

Changes to legislation not only require an

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