A very sensitive issue concerning the growth path for Indian lawyers working in LPOs was raised and discussed at the Conference. The same was rightly raised by a delegate from a leading London law firm. All vendor delegates took a special interest in the discussion and it was a question which many seemed not to have dwelled upon in the past.
Would all attorneys become managers? Would all managers become Head of Operations and then again what about the growth path of the person who is already the Head of Operations? It is true that every attorney would not make his way to the managerial level; such being so what do you expect an efficient Indian LPO attorney do to? Leave after sometime and search for another job? Get frustrated and go back to work on Indian legal matters or may be keep on being an attorney in an LPO with an attitude of a bonded labor?
It is not a matter of distant past when we saw Clifford Chance taking two of their attorneys from their Gurgaon Center and putting them in CC Office in a different jurisdiction. They said that those two Indian attorneys working in their Gurgaon office was too brilliant to be kept just there without giving them a forward path to tread.
This is the kind of growth path that should be available to the efficient and brilliant members of the team of attorneys working in Indian LPOs. It should be the right of the clients to pick and choose the best brain from the LPOs in India to place them in their own office in any part of the globe. This would not only help the chosen ones to go ahead but at the same time it would set an example for the others to follow.
Given a wide growth path and such being actually put into action, many Indian lawyers of high caliber and intellect would be drawn to work for the LPO industry. It shall be a win-win situation for all.
If you are a Head of Operations of a LPO in India you must have got your eyebrows raised by now; don’t you worry, there is a huge pool of lawyers in India who are employable in LPOs and you can bank upon them in case your client takes away a few of your employees. As I have already said, this action of your client would attract many other Indian lawyers of good caliber to work for your LPO.
The same does apply to Managers managing the different projects and the Head of Operations as well. Each one must have a fair chance to go up the chain without being chained to a single position.
So I suggest, no non-solicitation clause in the off-shoring agreements restricting clients from offering the attorneys a position in their offices abroad. Of course you can build in a clause in the off-shoring agreement requiring the client to pay a reasonable premium to the concerned LPO for giving a release.
The matter of the fact is that there are growth paths available for lawyers (and non-lawyers) in the LPO industry subject to company policy. If the industry can consolidate efforts and communicate this message to the local/global talent pool through Global LPO Conference 2010, lots of well qualified lawyers would love to join this bandwagon. That would make a great push to the industry.
ReplyDeleteIn general and as precisely revealed in numerous literature, it is observable that any given relative forward growth path is a function of one or more quantitative and qualitative parameters including, but not limited to, target domain-of-expertise, quantifiable years invested in the domain-of-expertise and explicit and implicit (or tactical) knowledge accumulated and implemented thereof, results of demand-and-supply analysis in addition to economic feasibility analysis and the like. However, from the standpoint of the LPO / PPO / KPO domain the prevalent and typical Indian concept in connection with the relative forward growth path is one fundamental, yet crucial, topic that may be subjected to the concepts of Glasnost and Perestroika. That said, the relative forward growth path is context-sensitive (or context-dependent or context-aware). For example, in the IP sub-domain-of-expertise technocrats, scientists and the like must be aware of the fact that Intellectual Property Strategic Asset Management (IPSAM) and strategies and mechanics for implementation of one or more IP projects involves Knowledge Management and Knowledge Application Management thereby facilitating return-on- investment in terms of one or more input resources, such as capital, time and manpower, in a number of ways not yet known in the Indian Market. Today, employers (or vendors) must realize that by implementation of the concepts of Glasnost and Perestroika the term “relative forward growth path” may be redefined and put to practice in approaching years thereby facilitating unanimous view in the employer community to abolish and abandon the existing stereotyped definition. Thus, in at least one of one or more distinct modes the employer community may compensate the resources based on the revenue generated by the resource in an extremely innovative way. There is a great answer to this!!
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