Legal process outsourcing (LPO) company Integreon has entered into what it describes in a press release as the largest legal outsourcing deal ever, worth $852 million over 10 years, with British law firm CMS Cameron McKenna.
The work covered by the agreement — nonbillable support tasks such as accounting, human resources, marketing, training and information technology — does not affect lawyers directly.
According to the U.K. publication Legal Week, that means current law firm jobs won’t necessarily be shipped overseas. Instead, CMS employees whose “middle office” duties are covered by the deal will continue with their jobs but will start drawing a paycheck from Integreon rather than from the law firm.
CMS managing partner Duncan Weston told Legal Week, “We are not anticipating any redundancies at the moment. We want this to be seen as something which will be positive for the career development of our business support staff with the opportunities that they will have at Integreon.”
The deal is not the first of its kind for Los Angeles-based Integreon, but it is the largest, according to the company. Integreon, which maintains outsourcing centers in India as well as in the Philippines and South Africa, has previously handled support services for Clifford Chance and DLA Piper.
One notable aspect of Integreon’s agreement with CMS Cameron is the openness about the price tag. Most firms that turn to LPOs for discovery and other legal work ask not to be identified, much less have the value of their contracts disclosed. Thus, while rough estimates of the potential multibillion-dollar market for legal outsourcing have been bandied about for several years, the true scale of the industry has so far been hard to capture. That may be changing.
