A legal process outsourcing firm sells document review, contract abstraction and research to clients abroad. Reviewers and paralegals work in shifts to client deadlines, and the margin sits in accuracy, speed and not losing trained people.
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Share your requirementsA legal process outsourcing firm in India does legal support work for law firms and companies elsewhere: reviewing documents for a dispute, abstracting contracts into a table, drafting routine papers, researching a point and managing records. Work arrives in projects with a client deadline and a billing rate per hour or per document. Teams of law graduates, paralegals and senior reviewers work on shifts that match the client's time zone. Quality is checked by sampling, and a bad sample reflects on the whole team. Read it with the wider law firms and legal practices hub and the professional services sector page.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
A client sends a large review with a short deadline, then goes quiet. Headcount that suits one month is idle the next, and hiring in a hurry hurts quality.
Teams working to a client time zone lose sleep and social life. Absence climbs after a few months, and good reviewers start looking for day jobs.
Reading thousands of documents with the same coding rules is tiring work. Accuracy drops late in a shift and late in a project.
Coding guides, tools and escalation rules change with every client. New reviewers need training before they can be billed, and that time is not paid for.
Hours logged against matters feed invoices. Errors cause disputes with clients, and targets built on them feel unfair to reviewers.
Many join with plans for a law firm, further study or an in-house job. Careers inside the firm are unclear, so exits are expected and constant.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Recruitment and Talent Acquisition; Employee Administration; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a legal process outsourcing firms business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A rolling view of expected projects and the team each needs, so hiring is planned weeks ahead.
What this coversHideA rolling view of expected projects and the team each needs, so hiring is planned weeks ahead. The recruitment process supports it.
Rotating nights, limits on consecutive night shifts and a clear leave approach for night teams.
What this coversHideRotating nights, limits on consecutive night shifts and a clear leave approach for night teams. See attendance, shift and leave.
Mix review hours with research, quality checking or training sessions so attention stays up and people learn other skills.
What this coversHideMix review hours with research, quality checking or training sessions so attention stays up and people learn other skills.
A short briefing on the coding guide, the tool and escalation rules, with a small test batch before billable work starts.
What this coversHideA short briefing on the coding guide, the tool and escalation rules, with a small test batch before billable work starts.
A pair of measures reviewers understand, such as sample accuracy and documents per hour, shared weekly.
What this coversHideA pair of measures reviewers understand, such as sample accuracy and documents per hour, shared weekly. The performance process explains the review.
A route from reviewer to senior reviewer, team leader or subject specialist, with skills listed at each step.
What this coversHideA route from reviewer to senior reviewer, team leader or subject specialist, with skills listed at each step.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
A hiring routine that follows the project forecast, with a bench of trained reviewers for sudden ramp-ups.
Night rotas, rest and leave planning for teams working to a client's clock.
Accuracy and speed measures reviewers can understand and challenge fairly.
A weekly view of billable hours, idle bench, accuracy and exits by project.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why associates and managers leave consulting, accounting, legal and advisory firms, and how to ask about progression, workload and partners at exit.
6 min readRead article
Sources beyond the neighbouring gate for setters, turners, inspectors and leak test hands, plus a one-hour bench trial built from your own rejected parts.
7 min readRead article
Payroll says one joining date, the personal file says another and the manager remembers a third. How to establish a single trustworthy employee record and keep it that way.
7 min readRead article
How to spot an unmanageable workload before it becomes an exit or an error, what to look at, how to talk about it and what to change, without guessing.
5 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Build a forecast from client conversations, keep a small trained bench and cross-train reviewers on several clients. Hiring a large batch after a project lands usually costs quality, so the bench is cheaper in the end.
Rotate people on a set pattern, limit consecutive nights, allow proper rest days and keep the team connected to daytime colleagues. Ask your night teams what helps them. Their answers are usually specific and practical.
Use sample checks by a second reader and share the results quickly. Look at accuracy and speed together, so reviewers are not pushed into one at the cost of the other.
Often they see no path and the work repeats. Show steps to senior reviewer, team leader or specialist roles, and give chances to learn drafting or research. That does not stop all exits, but it slows them.
Keep entries simple, agree the matter codes with teams and check differences weekly. When timesheets feed targets and invoices, a small error becomes a disagreement, so quick correction matters.
We would compare headcount with billed hours, ask night reviewers about the rota and read a recent client quality report. A forecast-led hiring plan and a project induction are good first jobs. We write the scope down for you to approve.
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