Law firms rush to hire IITians
It is the high quality work that is attracting IITians and other top engineering school graduates to join.
By PTI |
NEW DELHI: Seeking to tap the multi-billion dollar growth prospects in legal process outsourcing business, law firms are exploring all possible avenues in their bid to attract talent, including IITs that are better known for churning out engineers.
The LPO business in India is expected to grow to five billion dollars in less than five years, though it was nearly non-existent till a few months back.
With the shortage of required talent being a major hurdle for niche outsourced works like patent drafting, the law firms are even rushing to Indian Institutes of Technology and other premier engineering colleges in the country for hiring purposes, besides their regular destinations like law schools.
Recently, the country's leading LPO firm Pangea3 recruited 30 graduates from the current academic session at various IITs.
The IITians hired by Pangea3 are "very excited about the opportunity to work with innovative ideas at the cutting edge of technology for Silicon Valley companies," the company's CEO Sanjay Kamlani told media.
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Exposure available in LPOs is much wider as compared to the one available at R&D division of organisations, Kamlani claimed. In a bid to attract IIT graduates to this new avenue, the law firms are believed to be offering a starting salary of close to Rs 10 lakh per annum.The LPO industry is eyeing to hire IITians for high-end jobs like patent application and process prosecution of products, which are being outsourced from a number of sectors like IT, telecom, pharma and electronics.
"It is this niche, high quality work that is attracting IITians and other top engineering school graduates to join," Kamlani said.
These engineers work along with patent lawyers to draft patent applications and analyse IP combining expertise in law and technology, differentiating Pangea3 in the IP Services space, he added.
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These are the works that is estimated to account for the major chunk of business coming to Indian firms, but an average law graduate might be unable to execute these jobs efficiently, the experts believe.These technical jobs include analysing and the subsequent draft papers for complex works like claims made by inventor, mapping, making patent illustrations, proof published patent applications and issued patents and also conducting patent related studies.
Presently, Pangea3 has seven IIT graduates in its Intellectual Property team, which includes three with Masters degree (MTech) and others Bachelors degree (BTech).
There are a couple of more firms currently doing LPO business in the country, including GB Law Solutions and Office Tiger, while a number of existing BPO firms as well as new companies are planning to expand into this business and might soon tap the IITs to expand their workforce.
Last August, a study conducted by Crisil Research and Information Services said that Indian law firms could earn up to $4.7 billion by 2011 by tapping into the massive $25 billion United States legal off-shoring business.
It is also estimated that 60 per cent of all legal work including patent prosecution will be outsourced to India by 2016.
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