CONTRACT SERVICES - "Intentional Acts Exclusion" Clause in an Insurance Policy:

In deciding whether a homeowner’s insurance policy provides coverage to homeowners who are sued in connection with sexual assaults committed by their son, the New Jersey Supreme Court has held that the homeowner’s policy language excludes coverage for the damages committed by their son.

Addressing the policy language of intentional acts exclusion clause, the Supreme Court infers that “‘an insured’ is synonymous with ‘any insured’, and therefore the acts of one insured person are sufficient to disqualify other insured persons from coverage.”

The complete text can be accessed from the link below:
http://www.lawppl.com/docs/8-08/Villav.Short.pdf

CONTRACT SERVICES - Changing Contract Terms Online:

Since the emergence of e-commerce, many experts have been wrestling with the question of how companies service its customers online. Under an on-line contract, companies often unilaterally or arbitrarily changes the terms by simply posting the changes to its website, without necessarily notifying its customers. This practice is contrary to the contract laws where such unilateral changes are invalid without the consent of the other party thereto.

In a significant development, a US federal appeals court has ruled against companies posting revised terms to its website without notifying the customers. “This is because a revised contract is merely an offer and does not bind the parties until it is accepted.”

Full text of this case is available to the following link:

http://pub.bna.com/eclr/0675424_071807.pdf

Re-assuring the LPO Faith

The findings pursuant to a recent LPO summit held by the American Conference Institute, is nothing but encouraging and offers hope in the cause to establish LPOs' much desired place in the outsourcing industry.

One of the lawyers from a top US law firm, conducted a comparative review of the work done by an LPO to that of its onshore counterpart, and the result thereof offers a constructive look into the LPO end-product viability.

The complete article can be accessed at the following link:
http://www.slaw.ca/2009/04/20/the-results-are-in-and-the-winner-is%E2%80%A6/

From the Horse's Mouth - Outsourcing in 2009

For obvious reasons accumulated from a perception of the ongoing trends, getting more done for less seems to be the tag line, and by the looks of it, it will be, for some time to come.

Here's a look into the global trend, as authored by Morrison Foerster, a law firm, accessible at:
http://www.mofo.com/international/CN_en/news/15129.html

The "E" word - LPO Efficiencies

Diagnosis is the first step towards cure. So is document analysis, towards an effective legal recourse path, especially with regard to litigation documentation and the process itself, in the larger picture.

In order to ascertain the viability of either trotting or turning away from a particular path of legal recourse, a thorough knowledge of legal factual circumstance(s) preceding the warrant of such a recourse, is necessary.

As important as this preliminary stage of introspection is, obtaining the desired effects economically is a seemingly daunting task, but arguably fit for an LPO! Especially when blessed with the gift of electronic media cutting down time barriers and given the LPOs' rich resource pool of law graduates from some of the best law schools in the country, and last of all but not the least, the economies of their operating costs.

A detailed analysis of LPO's and their effective role in regard to providing litigation support services is available at the following link:
http://www.sourcingmag.com/content/c060918a.asp

Recession, LPO and Immigration Laws

Just to paint a simple picture of the economic efficiencies of an LPO, especially in times of economic turmoil, such as the one in hand presently, one's attention could be drawn to the mismatch of number of paralegals to attorneys in an establishment handling immigration law and work pertaining to it.

It is both, a good logic and a fact, that accomplishing process driven area(s) of work, such as the one aforestated, at lower costs, would be an ideal area for an LPO to meddle in, which certainly would be welcome by many a law firm involved in the aforementioned area of work.

The added leverage here being, an LPO's resource pool is not drawn from paralegals, but seasoned lawyers with well adorned law degrees and accolades willing to do the paralegal's work, only at a lower cost. More so, the outsourcer does not have to deal with mundane human resource problems.

A more detailed review of benefits of LPOs for firms handling immigration laws / related work are discussed in detail, in the article by Jan Krasny available at the following link:
http://www.sourcingmag.com/offsite.asp?A=Fr&Url=http://www.ilw.com/articles/2009,0513-krasny.shtm

FACE OFF: The Two Faces of Outsourcing

Befitting the title here, on a positive note, there is the economic side of outsourcing and on a negative note, there is the human side of outsourcing. It's a question of choice of economic benefit over compassionate grounding for one's counterpart. For lack of better words, there is a portion of the world that, more often than seldom, strives to save as much as it can. whereas there is also it's counterpart, the human part that loses out as a result thereof. Simply put, whereas large industrial powers may see the economics of benefit in outsourcing, it's human counterpart loses it's own subsistence power, as a result thereof.

Rapid expansion of the service industry sector, while blessing the developing economies, has also led to, a not so necessarily evil but rather a less desired consequence, loss of jobs by employees of foreign out-sourcers.

Added to this, is the unsustainable risk of interaction of forces, which require continual tweaking to maintain a healthy balance, between being a detail oriented brain and having an eye for the bigger overall picture.

The question that one needs to ask is, irrespective of cost benefit factors, when a resource (handling outsourced work in India) is equally if not as much, dedicated to his / her work as his / her counterpart in the outsourcer's own jurisdiction of operation would / might have been / is, what makes the former's position so susceptible to being targeted with undesirable condemnation, from whichever corner, such condemnation may emnate?

Perfection is a bottomles well and we agree. While having said that, one can always strive towards enhancing efficiency in the modus operandi of a legal process outsourcing entity, there is also a requirement of undertaking an equally tedious task of monitoring / minimising unrpoductive expenditure of time.

At the end of the day, the logics of service industry take command, led by the limitations of time. and the choice of embracing or shunning the legal process outsourcing sector, is a choice, a conscientious one, that has to be made by each individual player, but which, for obvious reasons will be dominantly motivated by economic factors.

The aforesaid is a brief introductory summary of a very interesting article authored by Mr. Jerry E. Durant, Chairman Emeritus of The International Institute for Outsource Management.

The complete article can be accessed at the following link:
http://www.outsourcing.com/pdf_files/04.10.2009/The%20NEW%20Economics%20of%20Outsourcing.pdf