Why Outsourcing Legal Work Is Becoming Essential for Personal Injury Law Firms

Personal injury law is an urgent, high-volume law. Attorneys can have dozens of cases on the go, each with their own documents to review, medical record requests to make, deposition preparation to do, demand letters to draft, court filings to do, and client contact to maintain. For many companies, it is no longer feasible to manage all of these with their in-house team. 

Hence, legal process outsourcing (LPO) has shifted from a late-stage experiment in the back office to a main business approach. Firms used to do everything in-house, but now they are outsourcing legal work to keep cases moving, without increasing their fees. 

This article discusses the reasons for the change, how this affects personal injury firms, and how outsourcing legal work actually provides real competitive benefits.

The Pressure Personal Injury Firms Are Facing Right Now

Operating a personal injury practice is challenging to say the least and has become even more challenging over the last several years. Caseloads have grown. There have been rising client expectations regarding responsiveness. Meanwhile, the expense for employing, educating, and sustaining competent lawyers remains high. Meanwhile, the price of employment, training, and sustaining competent legal staff is increasing. 

Many companies are overstretched by others. Administrative and paralegal duties consume hours of law firm attorneys’ time, diverting them from legal work. Case timelines slip. Staff burn out. The personal injury firm may also be on a contingency basis, which means that delays have a direct impact on the revenue flow. 

This adds pressure for firms and makes outsourcing a viable option to help alleviate the strain.

What Is Legal Process Outsourcing, and Why Does It Fit Personal Injury?

Legal process outsourcing (LPO) is the outsourcing of legal support tasks to a third-party vendor, either domestic or international. Every provider has trained legal staff who work as an extension of the law firm, such as a paralegal, document reviewer, case manager, or legal researcher. 

This model is particularly applicable to personal injury litigation, where much of the work is repetitive and process driven. There are known workflows that can be followed for requesting medical records, preparing demand packages, standard correspondence, lien negotiation, and tracking deadlines. These are just the kind of work legal outsourcing services can do at scale and efficiently. 

Firms can obtain a team of dedicated paralegals from an LPO provider who are able to do several jobs when a paralegal is not hired for one specific job.

Key Tasks Personal Injury Firms Are Outsourcing

Personal injury paralegal services can be used for a wide variety of work, more so than what a lawyer might think first. Common tasks include: 

Retrieving and organizing medical records: Medical records need to be retrieved from hospitals, clinics, and providers, which can be time-consuming. Outsourced teams handle requests and keep track of any delays and arrange records into organized, easy-to-read summaries that attorneys can access right away. 

Initial demand letter drafting: Legal writers who have been in practice for a while can draft initial demand packages using case facts, medical summaries, and damages calculations, which would otherwise have required hours of attorney drafting. 

Court filing/eFiling support: Filing deadlines are strict. Avoid the risk of deadlines or any procedural error by outsourcing eFiling to trained professionals. 

Deposition preparation: Support teams may prepare exhibit binders, organize witness information, and draft Deposition outlines to help the attorneys walk into hearings ready. 

Medical liens and lien tracking and resolution: Medical liens are a headache in personal injury cases. Outsourced teams can handle lien inventories, liaise with lienholders, and assist in the preparation of negotiation packages. 

Tracking case status and providing client updates: Update and inform clients, as a professional duty and a reputation builder. Routine status updates can be done by the support staff, leaving attorneys free to focus on substantive discussions.

The Business Case: Cost, Capacity, and Consistency

Cost is one of the most obvious choices that companies make to outsource their legal services. A full-time paralegal in a large metropolitan area in the United States includes salary, benefits, office space, equipment and the time of a manager. An outsourced legal team, on the other hand, is paid by the project or retainer, grows and shrinks as case volume increases and decreases and has no benefits or onboarding structure to implement. 

However, cost is not the only factor. Capacity is important. Having the capacity to expand support in a timely fashion can make the difference between a smooth or chaotic case intake or a large multi-plaintiff case. Legal process outsourcing services provide companies with adaptability without the months of recruiting and training. 

Consistency is the third factor. The best LPO portals develop standardized processes and quality management systems in every process they manage. That means that your firm is subject to the same standards regardless of the number of cases you have whether your firm has five active cases this month or fifty.

Litigation Support: A Closer Look at What Outsourcing Covers

Attorneys typically use the term “outsource litigation support services” to describe a smaller group of pre-trial and trial preparation tasks that involve a lot of work but do not require a licensed attorney’s skills. 

In a personal injury case, litigation outsourcing usually involves the document review and coding, creating exhibits, medical/accident record chronology, calculations for settlement, and the preparation of trial binders. These things can take hours of attorney time that could be better used on strategy, negotiation, and preparation for court proceedings. 

There are so many aspects of personal injury law that do not require the input of a human, yet they are essential to the practice. Personal injury attorneys spend a lot of time hearing and mediating and must be prepared for every aspect of the process, but there are several parts of the task that don’t require their expertise.

Addressing the Common Concerns

For attorneys that have never used an LPO provider, there can be worries regarding confidentiality and quality control, in addition to communication. These are legitimate inquiries, and savvy providers answer them outright. 

The confidentiality is maintained by signed confidentiality agreements, secure file transfer systems, access controls and adherence to applicable bar rules on outsourcing. Just as in most jurisdictions, firms maintain supervisory responsibility over outsourced work. 

Quality is controlled using specific project managers, defined review procedures, and frequent performance reporting. Most LPO companies use a fixed team for each firm, and gradually over time, they come to be acquainted with your standards and needs. 

Communication is managed via pre-defined check-ins, project management systems, and escalation plans. Many companies discover their outsourced support team is far more useful and far more structured than an overworked in-house paralegal who has a lot of work to do.

How Personal Injury Firms Can Get Started

The best way is to have a definite scope to begin with. Understand the activities that are consuming a lot of time within your company but are not that strategic. Common starting points include medical record management and demand letter preparation, due to their high volume, structured workflow, and providing immediate capacity gains when outsourced. 

Then, research LPO providers by their experience handling personal injury cases, their data security measures, their turnaround times, and their ability to scale. If you can, request references from other plaintiff law firms. 

A good outsourcing agreement will usually begin with a pilot contract, a specific scope of work that is undertaken for a limited duration and then move into a longer-term support contract. This will allow both parties to be on the same page before entering into a more extensive relationship.

The firms growing fastest aren’t working harder. They’re outsourcing smarter.

Looking for a reliable company? Hazen Tech delivers reliable, scalable legal process outsourcing for personal injury law firms.

 Book a free consultation at hazentech.com

Conclusion

It appears personal injury firms are always having to work harder for less, take on increased workload, tight deadlines, and better results for clients without necessarily increasing their budgets. LPO services are a viable solution to these problems. 

When firms let trained, outside experts handle the repetitive, process-based tasks; they have more time to dedicate to strategy, advocacy, and outcomes tasks that require legal expertise. For more legal insights, firms can stay updated through Legal Frame Wire. Those companies that have decided to outsource legal services as a long-term strategy, not just as a Band-Aid, will be in the best position to sustainably grow in a competitive market. 

Outsourcing personal injury services and litigation outsourcing can provide your practice with the capacity, consistency, and cost control you need, whether you are a solo practitioner working with increasing caseloads or a mid-size firm seeking to streamline your operations.