But local LPO firms cite a competing 2005 report from the US-based research firm Forrester, which had concluded that India had close to 12,000 LPO jobs in 2004, a number the report said would rise to about 80,000 by 2015. The local firms also claim that they are on the fasttrack to success by pointing to the scorching growth rate their industry has been enjoying over the past few years.

Mumbai-based Pangea3 is a case in point. Founded in 2004 by entrepreneurs Sanjay Sham Kamlani and David Perla, the firm has120 lawyers on its rolls and claims it can handle almost everything that a US law firm can.  It boasts revenues of about $10 million (Rs 41 crore) from a roster of over 150 clients (37 of them Fortune 500 companies) and has gone through two rounds of private equity funding.

According to Valuenotes, a Pune-based business intelligence and research firm, there are about 60 such LPOs in India, performing a wide array of services for their US clients.  These range from low-value services such as processing immigration documents to highly sensitive matters such as doing contract analysis for corporate mergers.

None of this is enough to convince Alok Aggarwal, chairman and co-founder, Evalueserve, and one of the pioneers of the knowledge-process outsourcing business in the country.  “Unlike many areas, such as information technology, banking, finance and insurance services, where as much as 10-12 per cent of the services may be offshored to India by 2015, the corresponding figure for legal services is only 1 per cent.”

The reasons are many. For one, when companies assess their costs, legal expenses normally figure at the bottom of their list. This is partly because legal costs are not fixed and difficult to estimate. There is also a reluctance to tinker with legal costs because of the high risks entailed by negative legal outcomes.

“Nobody wants to touch legal costs because your internal counsel will tell you that if you lose one major litigation, you’ll wash away any savings you can get through offshoring,” says Opera Solutions’ Ajmani.