LegalBase News 21 July 2009 686 views 2 Comments  Print This Post  Email This Post

LegalBase was recently acknowledged by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) as one of the “Best 10” companies offering legal outsourcing services in the IAOP’s Global Outsourcing 100^TM Report.  LegalBase was particularly commended by the IAOP for their employee management and executive leadership.

This is a tremendous achievement for such a young company and it showcases Sri Lanka as a frontrunner as a provider of legal outsourcing services.

LegalBase Director and Co-founder, Sudath Perera is quoted as saying “we are very pleased with the firm’s rankings and are looking forward to further developing the business and growing the firm in order to continue to move up the rankings in the future. This is not only a great achievement for our firm but also the Sri Lankan outsourcing industry as it clearly puts Sri Lanka on the map as a top rate destination for legal outsourcing services.”

LegalBase began operations in January 2008 because its founders recognized the potential Sri Lanka has to be a real contender in the Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) industry.  LegalBase operates under the leadership of its co-founders Sudath Perera and Ali Tyebkhan. Sudath, a prominent Sri Lankan lawyer, is the founder and senior partner of Sudath Perera Associates who teamed up with Ali Tyebkhan, an English solicitor who worked previously as a lawyer in London and Brussels for leading international law firm Lovells and Dubai for the Emirates National Oil Company.

LegalBase is a pioneer of value added LPO service and it is the first provider of niche offshore legal services in Sri Lanka and since its inception it has made tremendous strides into the outsourcing market. The company provides foreign law services primarily to clients in the U.K, Europe and North America with the objective of extending their services further into the Australian and Asian markets.

Co-founder and Director of LegalBase, Ali Tyebkhan, says “A real opportunity exists in providing higher value legal work to law firms and corporations. In order to do this it is necessary to match work produced by in-house teams and law firms onshore…It is more about being an offshore law firm rather than an outsourcing factory.”

The legal system and the pool of talented lawyers available in Sri Lanka make it an ideal location from which to offer legal outsourcing services and LegalBase has spearheaded Sri Lanka’s foray into the provision of complex and value-added legal services.

Ali Tyebkhan commented, “I believe my international experience has enabled and encouraged me to organise LegalBase in a manner similar to other international law firms, thereby making LegalBase an extremely competitive provider of legal outsourcing services”.

In fact in July 2008 the Asian Counsel, a leading Asian publication for lawyers, predicated that through LegalBase’s operations “Sri Lanka is set to challenge India for a piece of the legal outsourcing action”.

The IAOP accreditation serves as validation that a Sri Lankan based LPO can achieve international success. The IAOP is an association of outsourcing professionals and its global membership works collaboratively to collect, analyse and publicise information significant to outsourcing professionals.  “This year, the judges evaluated the most diverse set of applicants we’ve ever had” said Jagdish Dalal, Managing Director, Thought Leadership, IAOP and chairman of the judges’ panel. “Getting named to The Global Outsourcing 100 and The World’s Best Outsourcing Advisors is a great recognition, particularly given the strong competition, and these companies should be proud of achieving excellence in the field.”.

Sudath Perera believes that the market for more complex and higher value legal services is poised to experience significant growth in the future.  He says, “In the aftermath of this recession companies and law firms the world over are looking at ways to reduce costs.  LPOs like LegalBase offer these companies quality legal work comparable to what is produced onshore at vastly reduced costs. It is just better business sense for these companies to offshore as much legal work as they can to us. ”

The opportunity exists for local subsidiaries of foreign multinational companies to make a positive contribution that benefits their entire organisation globally by promoting legal outsourcing services available in Sri Lanka as a way to decrease legal spending in the current challenging economic climate.  The end of the war means that foreign companies outsourcing work to Sri Lanka need not be concerned about safety and security risks.  It is the ideal climate for Sri Lanka to really grow and stand out as a provider of outsourcing services.

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