SERVICES: ex-City lawyer launches call management operation

A former City lawyer has launched what he claims is the first outsourcing company in India aimed solely at the legal market, and at least one magic circle firm is already in talks to use its call management service.

The development comes a week after Allen & Overy sealed an outsourcing deal for its document production - also in Chennai (see [2003] Gazette, 18 September, 4).

Milan Zala, a six-year-qualified assistant who has worked in the City with Linklaters, Sidley Austin Brown & Wood and Pinsent Curtis (now Pinsents), has established Outcom to offer call management and answering services to the legal profession.

Firms would outsource the role of secretaries and fee-earners listening to voice mails and taking messages that would be processed and delivered instead by the Chennai-based Outcom centre.

Mr Zala said: 'On a conservative estimate we believe that a firm with a staff of around 250 could generate additional seven-figure income levels using this technology.

We already have one magic circle firm, one top 20 firm and one large US firm examining the possibilities for piloting.'

Mr Zala - who is Outcom's managing director - said the company would also launch document production outsourcing in due course.

'A lot of law firms are now looking at their practices as 21st century businesses, and seeing how they can reduce costs and best utilise their services.

The old structures can't be supported in today's globalised world,' he said.

Jeremy Fleming