October 24, 2023 - Outsource School

The process of outsourcing legal work is not much different than any other type of work. What you must take extra care with are the qualifications and other technical details involved. Because of the nature of legal work, you need to meticulously screen and select the right legal assistant.

Of course, you would have to go through this intricate process even when hiring in-house. So, with outsourcing legal work, you aren’t losing anything. You can actually gain more time because several expert agencies already exist. You widen your talent pool when hiring online, and they have certifications you can easily check and trust.

In this post, we’re going to give you 15 legal tasks you can start outsourcing to an assistant. Let us know which ones helped you the most! We love getting feedback and testimonies!

1. Legal Research

Research is among the most hated tasks because it can be so tedious. Of course, there are a few people who actually love this type of work! As hard as it is to believe that, they do exist! Outsourcing legal work like this – the tasks you hate the most – can return even grater benefits because it alleviates so much stress.

Due diligence is necessary to ensure quality output in the legal field. Any lawyer worth their mettle needs help to avoid having to work 80-hour weeks because of the heavy research load. Legal research tasks include litigation and non-litigation research, statutory research, case law research, foreign law research, regulatory or compliance law research, and legislation research. Getting any of these off your plate can be a huge help.

2. Document Review

Electronic discovery, or eDiscovery, is the process of searching out and collecting electronically stored information, or ESI. This data is then sorted through to identify relevant bits to produce them as a judge might request in a law suit or investigation. The law also requires ESI in other cases, such as furnishing opposing counsel with copies of evidence. ESI can be anything from emails and databases to documents stored online or voicemails stored by phone companies. It can comprise audio messages and other social media or website content as well.

As you can imagine, looking for and collating this data can be time-consuming. It can also be challenging because electronic documents are more dynamic – they change, unlike hard copies of documents. This means that you need other items such as metadata to get time and date stamps. This is to prove when they were produced or last edited. This also applies to document authors and recipients, as well as other file properties. It can be a lot! So, document review will get expensive and unmanageable if you do it yourself.

3. Contract Drafting

Outsourcing legal drafting services can be very useful when you deal with a lot of them. These can include employment contracts, lease agreements, sale or purchase contracts, and the like.

Most small and medium-sized businesses don’t have legal departments. They simply don’t need a whole separate division to handle a legal document or concern here and there. Creating one just to draft documents would be a huge waste of resources. And you don’t want just anyone drafting these important papers because you want to ensure accuracy and compliance. Outsourcing means allowing experts to take care of these needs efficiently.

4. Legal Processes

Did you know that even law firms outsource various legal processes? Just like research, many legal tasks can be time-consuming and therefore expensive to do in-house. As the legal industry changes, many firms make adjustments in favor of serving customers better. This means not having to charge them too much for high-quality services. Legal process outsourcing is now a major trend.

Legal process outsourcing includes legal writing, paralegal tasks, litigation support, legal accounting, and similar work. This can get as granular as multi-jurisdictional surveys, motions, appellate briefs, trial briefs, legal memoranda, complaints, and pleadings.

5. Deposition Summarization

Depositions can consist of all the information that an attorney gathers for a case. As such, they can be hundreds of pages thick! Even if you have only one witness and their story is only five pages long, though, you still need a summary. The court does not need to, nor would likely be willing to, go through to the whole thing during the actual trial. Deposition summaries have excerpts of the highlights to facilitate the process.

Because these summaries are critical to cases, they must be meticulously prepared. Outsourcing legal work of this level of complexity is wise. You don’t want any error clouding your meaning when your testimony is presented in court.

6. Document Retrieval

Outsourcing legal document retrieval can increase your company’s efficiency. The people who work for you probably already have enough to do. Plus, they won’t likely have any legal know-how. This can make even the simple task of document management difficult. They won’t know what one or another type of document is called. They could skim right past it without a clue.

Legal document retrieval includes obtaining public records, duplicating official copies of legal documents, storing and processing documents, and submitting requested documents to law offices.

7. Transcription Services

Because of the sensitive nature of legal work, outsourcing legal transcription is the best option. Like anything else connected to legal work, producing error-free transcripts is essential. You need someone who can accurately convert audio or video data from discovery sessions, arbitrations, court hearings, depositions, jury instructions, and the like. With all the legal language involved and high emotional volatility expected, legal transcription can be tricky.

8. Client Communication

You can outsource any kind of client communication. It always helps to have someone on board to help in this area. When it comes to legal matters, however, you want to make sure that you’re getting expert help. Because it makes no sense to hire someone for this particular type of conversation, outsourcing works best.

9. Regulatory Compliance Checks

You are responsible for maintaining the integrity of your operations. This means making sure that you are compliant with all the applicable regulatory requirements. This will keep your business safe from the risks of money laundering and financial terrorism. This takes more than a good anti-virus program, though. When you outsource to a legal compliance firm, you get expert help to uphold the integrity of your business. This way, you can avoid the pitfalls of dealing with criminals and other shady characters. Non-compliance can bring more than hefty fines and damaged reputations. It can actually bring you to the point of closing your business and facing criminal charges.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is outsourcing legal tasks to online assistants secure and confidential?

If you are hiring someone on your own, you are responsible for securing every aspect of their work. If you hire an agency or offshore company, make sure that you read the fine print. They may offer security features, but you need to do your due diligence. Ultimately, you can still be held liable if you do not do all you can to ensure secure transactions and conversations.

How do I choose the right outsourcing provider for legal tasks?

Security is one major consideration. You must also look into their level of expertise and experience, as well as their niche. Not all legal areas are alike. You cannot, for instance, hire criminal law assistance to handle a case involving financial fraud.

Can I outsource both short-term and long-term legal projects?

You can outsource legal work of any kind, as long as it can be done online. Do make sure that you are hiring someone who has the right knowledge, though. Laws differ from country to country and even state to state, so you need to be very careful to check that you are asking the right people for help.

What Is Outsource School?

Outsource School helps you to unlock the potential of virtual assistants and accelerate your business growth.

This is the exact system Outsource School’s founders, Nathan Hirsch and Connor Gillivan, used to go from zero to 8 figures and 40+ virtual assistants with an exit in 2019.

Since being founded in 2020, Outsource School has helped 1,000+ business owners hire 2,000+ virtual assistants for their companies.

Schedule a free sales call to learn more

Free resources you might like:

Conclusion

Don’t forget that outsourcing legal work does not mean letting go of your legal responsibilities! You are still liable for the outcomes. So, we highly recommend that you maintain strict oversight of any partner you engage to do any type of work for you. Make sure that you also have a tight agreements, all properly documented. Start with the scope of work you will outsource, assurance of 24/7 access to databases, and strict confidentiality according to the laws that bind you, not just them.

Looking to outsource QA (quality assurance)?

There are many essential business processes like QA testing that need attention. However, some of the tasks involved might be beyond you or your internal team’s capabilities. Whether this is a skill gap or a time constraint, quality assurance simply cannot get done the right way.

Here, we will define QA and QA outsourcing, list some benefits, and provide more information to guide you on your outsourcing journey.

What is QA Outsourcing?

Let’s start by defining these terms separately, then together.

QA or quality assurance, refers to processes and procedures developed and maintained to ensure products or services meet a predetermined standard. Quality assurance encompasses all stages of the production process. This can be from product design, to product development, to product testing, and finally, product delivery.

The purpose of QA is to ensure the reliability, safety and regulatory compliance of delivered products and services.

Outsourcing, involves hiring an outside company to take care of a particular task or entire process for you. The reasons for outsourcing can be numerous and we will talk more about that later.

Therefore, we can say that QA outsourcing involves hiring a third-party to take care of parts of your quality management system. This process includes both quality assurance and quality control.

Wait, aren’t they the same thing?

What’s the Difference Between Quality Control and Quality Assurance?

Because they are parts of quality management, it’s easy to get them confused and use the terms interchangeably. They are both integral to the process, however they are distinct.

Quality assurance is more about creating systems that lead to quality outputs. These systems and the resulting products must align with safety regulations. The products must also, of course, still work as intended. QA is all about creating processes that prevent defects or other quality related problems from happening. You could say part of QA is to make the job of personnel in the QC department much easier. The goal is the quality control seal of approval every time.

On the other hand, quality control is about inspection of the final products. They make sure what they manufacture meets pre-established quality guidelines. QC helps prove the efficacy of your QA system. If something doesn’t pass a QC check, they report it. Then, those in charge of quality management as a whole will come together to evaluate. Then they decide if the issue was a problem with the QA processes they had in place, or something else. Then they make tweaks or develop new processes for improvement to eliminate the issue in the future.

Benefits of Outsourcing QA

Access to Expertise and Experience

Let’s face it, not all of us know how to effectively create a quality check process. This is especially true when it needs to both have few gaps and be compliant with all the rules and regulations. For instance, do you know about ISO 9001 – a set of quality standards set by the International Organization for Standardization? If you don’t know what that is, you’re not alone. Most business owners don’t know much about it beyond the name. And that’s ok. It’s not in your job description or your area of expertise, after all.

The great thing about outsourcing QA and all its processes is that you don’t have to learn all the technicalities of quality management. Someone else has already absorbed and applied this knowledge. They’ve also likely worked with other companies in the past. This means they might even have templates already in place for companies in your industry. You don’t need to invest in years of study or reinvent the wheel!

Flexibility and Scalability

A lot of the time, you don’t need a complete roster of QA personnel to run your quality management department. Other times, you want a solution that can grow and scale together with your business. Maybe you wished your staff or department could get bigger only during certain times of the year. This means that the team would feasibly shrink back when you no longer need all that manpower.

Thankfully, these are all cases that outsourcing can help with. Outsourcing is a much more flexible solution. You get flexible pricing for flexible staffing of an inherently dynamic business and market.

Time Savings

With expertise and experience comes efficiency and effective procedures and SOPs. The experts have studied this. Their teams know what works and what fails, and they’ve learned how to turn failures into successes. They’ve done their research, performed their tests, and know how to apply standard best practices. They know how to follow regulations and guidelines, which they have studied diligently.

Improved Customer Satisfaction

What happens when you:

Get products out faster
Create products that are better quality
Deliver products that are consistently good

That’s right, you get a happy customer and happy investors and stakeholders to boot! A faster Time-to-Market (TTM) means the product gets in front of consumers’ eyes faster. Consistently excellent quality means better reviews and the makings of loyal customer relationships.

Types of QA Outsourcing

We can divide outsourcing into three main types: onshoring, nearshoring, and offshoring. An easy way to understand this is by thinking of the word “shore” as to where your business is located.

Onshoring – In this case, this is the type of outsourcing where you keep things national. You source outside help anywhere within your city, state, region, or country. One benefit to onshore outsourcing is that you can more easily conduct and be involved in physical inspections.
Nearshoring – As the name suggests, nearshoring refers to outsourcing to nearby countries. Say you live in the US. Popular nearshoring locations would be Brazil or Mexico. With nearshoring, you do get some of the benefit of proximity and lower costs. However, language barriers are more of a conscious consideration now.
Offshoring – Offshoring is international. If you are conducting something like software QA outsourcing, you don’t really need to be close to your team. This gives you access to cheaper costs and a larger talent pool. Again, however, you need to factor in cultural, language, and time zone differences.

Another thing to consider when choosing outsourcing types is the potential for insourcing your business processes. Insourcing is when you choose to accomplish in-house a task or process that was previously outsourced. Consider as well that there can be distinct differences in offshoring vs outsourcing.

QA Roles That Can Be Outsourced

The QA team is responsible for developing quality processes, procedures, and checklists and ensuring businesses adhere to them. They are also in charge of testing the efficacy of these processes.

Here are some common job titles in the quality assurance field:

QA Manager/Director/Etc.

These are the heads of your teams. They usually take on the roles of project managers. The creation, implementation, and monitoring of QA strategies fall under their supervision. They are also involved in training other employees, talking directly with suppliers, and reporting to the higher ups.

QA Engineer

These individuals play a key role in the development of QA procedures and protocols. They help develop and improve products and the testing and inspection processes they undergo.

QA Analyst

Analysts are responsible for collecting vital data from various stages of the QA process. They use statistics and generate reports to show to QA managers and other team members.

QA Tester

A tester is not only responsible for performing the tests, but is also involved in developing them. They work closely with QA analysts to gather data and create crucial reports.

QA Auditor

These individuals check QA systems and investigate potential issues within. They can then also suggest what course of action to take to correct the issues.

When to Outsource QA

There are several reasons why you might consider outsourcing sooner rather than later:

You have budget constraints or you want to reduce costs.
You want to improve the quality of your offerings.
Time is valuable and you want to free some up for yourself and your team.
You want to make better use of all of your skills and other resources, too, so you can focus on other core business objectives.
It’s time to fill in the gaps in your existing QA procedures and processes.
The QA team needs to grow to keep up with all the tasks.

Is QA Outsourcing Cost-Effective?

Cost-effectiveness is the major benefit of outsourcing in general, and QA is no outlier. If you counted the costs connected to hiring full-time in-house QA staff, you may likely choose to outsource QA instead.

To put this into perspective, the salary of a single junior-level quality assurance specialist in the US is upwards of $50,000. That isn’t including all other in-house cost factors like overheads, health and dental benefits, bonuses, recruitment costs, and taxes. So, you could be looking at around $55-60,000/year more accurately. That’s for one worker.

Now most businesses, especially small ones, don’t need that many workers. However, a proper QA team is still necessary if you want to make excellent products consistently.

Some may unknowingly think that QA isn’t all that necessary. But a proper QA system in place will already save you money in the long term. Think of all the potential product returns and rounds of testing you could avoid by doing it properly in the first place.

By outsourcing, you would save money on an already money-saving process. For instance, outsourcing QA does not require tax payments or benefits. QA offshore outsourcing rates could have you saving tens of thousands of dollars annually.

Where Can I Find Reliable People for QA Work?

This can depend on the type of QA outsourcing you go for.

For instance, if you choose to hire in-country, you can search in local directories for potential QA outsourcing service providers.

Additionally, you should determine if you’re looking for QA staff to help with products and services or for software QA outsourcing solutions.

Popular software QA services include PixelCrayons and QASource.

Finding a good outsourcing partner also depends on your niche. For instance, Lodestone is a good option for tech companies who make all kinds of devices like phones, TVs, and more.

It can be much easier to find the right QA team, the more specific you are with your needs.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I choose the right QA outsourcing provider?

Finding the right fit is all about knowing your needs first.

Here are a few tips:

Prepare a detailed job description.
List down what you are looking for in a partner.
Be diligent in your research.
Look for portfolios or social proofs.

What is the typical process for outsourcing QA services?

The process for, say, software QA outsourcing or outsourcing QA testing, is similar to most outsourcing processes. The basic steps are bulleted below, and you can always reach out to Outsource School for additional help in this area.

Identify and specify needs
Research hires
Interview
Select and finalize details (rate, deadlines, meeting scheds etc.)
Regular check-in
Delivery of product/project deadline
Revisions (if necessary)

What are the potential risks of QA outsourcing, and how can they be mitigated?

There are a few risks of outsourcing.

Like we mentioned, language, cultural, and time zone barriers can be big risks to working relationships and productivity. Communication with remote teams can be challenging. Data risk is also another reason for hesitancy.

Proper research into the company and people you are looking to hire can mitigate a lot of this. Look for companies with excellent reputations, good communication skills, and strong data security measures in place.

Pick countries that work best with your time zone and business hours. Or, make sure that overseas hires are night owls who perform better working the wee hours.

Set up communication channels ASAP and onboard new hires properly to meet your expectations.

What Is Outsource School?

Outsource School helps you to unlock the potential of virtual assistants and accelerate your business growth.

This is the exact system Outsource School’s founders, Nathan Hirsch and Connor Gillivan, used to go from zero to 8 figures and 40+ virtual assistants with an exit in 2019.

Since being founded in 2020, Outsource School has helped 1,000+ business owners hire 2,000+ virtual assistants for their companies.

Schedule a free sales call to learn more

Free resources you might like:

Conclusion

If you’re looking to outsource QA, you’re looking at a worthwhile investment. Save time, money, and gain the respect and loyalty of your customers. So, don’t let us hold you up. Go and make this smart business move!

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