I am writing from Gurgaon (high-tech satellite city of Delhi) today conducting additional due diligence on provider firms. Fortunately, being in meetings throughout the day keeps me out of the scorching mid-day Indian sun this time of year. I have always been impressed with the real estate boom in Gurgaon – if you have the chance, search online for the buildings going up in the area. Truly astounding.
Continuing from my last post, I wanted to highlight the additional areas of risk and risk management as it relates to performing effective due diligence on a legal outsourcing provider. Financial viability is certainly a core factor, but should not be the only determinant when making provider selection decisions.
After performing a number of on-site due diligence reviews, we keep coming back to the same key areas as follows:
- Personnel competency and continuity
- Security measures from both a technical and process perspective
- Executed and documented client service offerings
- Organizational longevity and capacity
It is important not only to check the box in these respective areas, as it requires truly digging down beyond the marketing hype to determine what the provider is actually doing.
In many regards, highly-successful legal outsourced services providers are more security-focused than their onshore counterparts. The key is seeking out these security-oriented firms that have a strong match to your service requirements. Furthermore, if you feel that not all of these or other areas were fully covered during the initial due diligence assessment, performing a supplementary, post-deal provider “check-in” is also a sensible component to manage the provider relationship.
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