While completing his Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery course, Ritesh Banka hadn’t so much as imagined he would some day be working in a legal services firm. Weren’t medicine and law poles apart?
Today, Banka knows better, having found a job as a legal medical consultant in a Chandigarh-based legal process outsourcing (LPO) firm.
LPOs are specialised business process outsourcing firms providing various legal services to law firms and corporate legal departments. The services offered pertain to corporate governance, due diligence in case of mergers and acquisitions, document reviews and research, etc.
Interestingly, Banka got the job in September 2008, as the financial crisis swept the world. The salary was much higher than what he would have got from practising medicine.
“The LPO job gives me a platform to leverage my expertise in medicine in solving legal issues on pharma related matters,” says Banka.
The pharma business involves a lot of legal work, related to litigation and patents, etc. Drug makers outsource legal research, litigation document review, patent applications, and claims analysis to LPOs.
The pharma sector hasn’t been affected much by the financial crisis and going by industry experts, the LPO business has actually seen work increase following the crisis. And when the two, both more or less insulated from the financial crisis, come together, the job opportunities are plentiful indeed.
People like Banka, with professional medical training, are best placed to tap these opportunities and can earn 30-50% more than what they would through medical practice.
As Lokendra Tomar, chief operating officer (Asia Pacific) of LPO Integreon, says, “Pharma companies can save up to 50% or more on what they would pay for onshore work in the US or UK by outsourcing to LPOs in India.”
Anup Bhasin, chief operating officer of Gurgaon-based LPO UnitedLex, says more and more multinational pharma companies are looking at outsourcing legal work to LPOs in India due largely to the cost arbitrage available.
Sanjay Kamlani, co-CEO of Pangea3, another LPO, concedes as much. “With increasing competition from foreign generic competitors, our US and Europe-based pharmaceutical clients are significantly increasing their demand for services in areas like patent analytics.”
With business expected to grow, the LPOs are looking at scaling up their employee strengths.
UnitedLex currently has about 300 people in India and plans to recruit 700 more by the end of calendar 2009. The recruits would include doctors, biochemists, lawyers and engineers, among others.
According to Tomar, Integreon, which has 1,700 people in India, would add about 600 more people this year, of which a “significant portion will be in India.”
In fact, going by ValueNotes Research, a research and intelligence service provider, by 2010, LPO jobs in the country would double from the current 16,000 or so.
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