Legal Process Outsourcing (often abbreviated as LPO), is a section of the outsourcing industry that is gaining great attention. In Legal Process Outsourcing, legal documents required by an outsourcer (law firms), such as preparation of wills and deeds, contracts, business agreements, business transaction details, are handled by an independent outsourcing service provider located in a different country. This type of outsourcing is mostly put to use by Western companies, in order to cut down on their legal costs.

As much as the industry may seem to be highly profitable, it is not without its drawbacks. The LPO industry is still in its early years, and the possible complications that can arise in outsourcing legal work, keeps potential clients at bay from this otherwise profitable practice. In addition, many companies that outsource their legal work are concerned about how much cost the practice could actually cut down their expenses, and become hesitant about adopting the practice.

Leading LPO organizations have understood the drawbacks and challenges and have risen to the occassion by addressing key concerns that arise in the decision making process of utlizing the LPO's services:

1. Confidentiality Issues – When one organization is sending its legal work off to an LPO firm located in a different country, the risk of breaching confidentiality exists. In addition, the outsourcing firm handling the operations must have strict guidelines in place and provide proper training to its employees to ensure that they understand and adhere to the strict requirements of the client. The outsourcing firm must also have a stringent background screening process in place, to ensure that only the reliable and dependable employees are hired.
2. Conflicts of client’s interest – Occurs when the LPO firm outsourcing services to a client takes up an additional legal project, either intentionally or unintentionally, which is opposed to the interest of the client. There are certain ethics that law firms have to be careful never to breach. For instance, a law firm representing one client in certain case must confirm that another branch of the same firm is not representing any opposing party. A law firm carrying out such practices, even inadvertently, will suffer a major blow to its reputation, and will probably also face a lawsuit from the compromised client.
3. Using the proper legal software – When legal work is being carried out by using special software packages, the software needs to be checked properly for quality control issues. There should be a searchable database that is constantly updated with categorized details about the client operations handled by the law firm, including the billing information. LPO services can be quite expensive compared to other fields of outsourcing. Clients do not take it kindly if they find out that they have been overcharged.

In spite of these drawbacks, the LPO industry is gaining great popularity in western countries and many organizations within the US and Europe, particularly in the UK, are willing to give this new industry a chance, in order to keep keep up with their competitors and cutting their overhead by multiplying their profits.