Legal Process Outsourcing Opportunity and Cobra Legal Solutions

Abstract

Bangalore has long been known as India’s information technology hub, and just a five-hour drive away from the city is Chennai, the southern metropolis of India and the capital of the state of Tamil Nadu. It was an unusually extended summer morning for 32-year-old Sakthivel Venkatraman, the managing director of operations of the New York headquartered Cobra Legal Solutions LLC (CLS), one of the leading legal process outsourcing service providers. Sakthivel was busy streamlining the operations in India and spearheaded the expansion plans. He had just moved to their new facility at Ascendas International Technology Park and was pondering over various strategic opportunities and challenges of the promising new business landscape. The increasing acceptance of outsourcing legal processes in the West had pumped up the growth rate of this new opportunity and also invited several new players to enter. Nevertheless, it also threw up unique challenges for the service providers in India and especially for the fledgling ten-year-old company. According to Sakthivel, the way the Company started was an interesting story in itself, since CLS did not originate in USA or India’s major business or law schools.