Are you right for a startup -II

The last post generated some questions from job-seekers. A few issues are discussed here.

• · Most startups and companies employ persons with higher qualifications.

When I was debating whether to study for a higher degree in law, the judge I was working for then, said to me, "It's not the degrees, but what you can do with them that counts." That led to me not only getting my Masters but also to leaving him and going on to better things.

Education is nothing but a manual telling you what to do in order to succeed but ultimately success will depend on your ability to implement that teaching in your daily life.

Any company, large or small, would rather employ someone who has passion and ambition, who can prove that he/she can play different roles, who displays inherent skills like being canny and street-smart, leadership qualities, even aggressiveness, than someone with just a string of degrees.

Qualifications are important. As important as possessing a strong fishing line. But you eat only if you have the determination, patience and skill to use the line to catch that fish.

• · Companies employ women more readily, than men.

In the news is the Government of India’s latest decision to employ more women in government jobs. It is a fact that the fairer sex is generally believed to be more sincere, more compliant and less likely to run away with the office funds. Women also tend to put down roots and are less likely to job hop. They bond quickly and display far more loyalty than men do. That adds up to a lot of plus points. The downside is that they need more time off for child bearing, rearing, and home making.

Men on the other hand do not take as much time off, are prepared to work late, to come in at odd hours, and to take on heavier jobs. However male employees are far more likely to up and leave and not worry about the mess they might leave their employers in. Men also tend to bond less with their employing company.

However, no firm will employ exclusively on gender basis, except for organizations specifically instituted to provide jobs for women. The best employee base a company could have would be one with a slightly higher level of female to male employees and a finely mixed potpourri of all communities, religions and states, which would bring together persons with area and race-specific skills, adding to the richness of the work atmosphere and also enhancing productivity.

• · Too much emphasis is placed on communication skills.

In my opinion, not enough emphasis can be placed on communication skills. Face it guys, you have to learn to talk the talk. You need not be an expert in the language. Even people whose mother tongue is English routinely make grammatical and spelling mistakes. However, knowledge of basic grammatical English is a must.

Very often students and employees ask for “tips” to enable them to speak English well. No amount of “tips” can make you speak and write well. I have always maintained that you must think, speak, and write the language if you want to master it.

I also feel very strongly that training in Communications does not end with the training period. During training you learn the basics but in order for the training to have any effect, you must continue to think and speak in English at all times and not just when you are forced to do so. If not, all that you learned will be just so much water down the drain.

I saw a message posted the other day which read, “Say him to write to me.” If you do not know when to use “say” and “tell”, I, for one, would not employ you.

The Freshers' Future

Posting in a long while.  Sincere apologies and a promise to post every fortnight. 

Last week while at college I was asked what was the scene like in LPOs.  Well, cost cutting seems to be the name of the game these days.  Rightly so.  Whether you are, or are not affected by the recession, or the situation in the US, this is not a time to be insular.  It is rather a time to work together to overcome the financial crisis.

The future of legal outsourcing has been discussed threadbare.  Everyone seems to agree that it is going to go places despite the recession in the US.  Personally I feel that this may not be so in the very near future at least. 

But the bottom line in business is profits and while a firm could decide NOT to offshore work where the anticipated profits are small and thus be seen to be patriotic, where larger profits are involved, the work will be offshored, immaterial of considerations of political correctness. 

The affect this side of the pond will be that small projects may not be offshored but the bigger ones certainly will.  Similarly the smaller legal firms abroad would decide to offshore work simply because they cannot afford not to.  They need to make profits in order to survive.

It is very true that the most affected by the state of the economy, are freshers.  Every company even those with bigger projects on hand, is preferring to recruit on a temporary basis and not face the hassle of handing out yearly packages.  Go with the flow.  Take what comes and be sure to keep note of where you worked and what you worked on.  Some day soon, all this work experience on your resume is going to look good.

Another concern expressed was that of US and UK lawyers being employed in Indian LPOs.  I really do not think the figures would be significant enough to affect the professional prospects of Indian lawyers.  However, even if they are, I think if you are going to go global, you have to be ready to face the competition. 

I repeat and repeat, polish your language and communication skills.  This is your Achilles heel. 

Next week’s post:  On Resumes and References.

 

PGDin Legal Process Outsourcing

The Indira Gandhi National Open University has just announced a one-year post-graduate diploma course in Legal Process Outsourcing. The eligibility for the course is a degree in Law and final year law students also may apply. www.ignouonline.ac.in/pgdipo. Now this is a first.
An earlier post also talks about the Global Legal Professional Certification Test for those seeking a career in LPOs.
I doubt they would be teaching you anything there that you would not learn in your first couple of months on an LPO job but in a competitive world, any extra teeth are always useful.

Do remember that irrespective of the number of diplomas and degrees and your degree of technical knowledge, no LPO is going to hire you if you do not have a good knowledge of spoken and written English.

RECRUITMENT IN AN LPO: Freshers are generally hired by most firms for all the routine dig-the-dirt jobs. What an LPO looks for while recruiting freshers is a good knowledge of English, a good law degree, and some computer knowledge, in that order.

For the high-end jobs, an LPO would seek legal professionals with an excellent command over English, good law degrees from reputed colleges, an ability to carry out legal research, and an ability to be able to compile and draft documents. Since legal process outsourcing is a new field, experience of working in an LPO in such a capacity would be invaluable, but if you can show that you have the potential to do such work, lack of experience would not really be a hindrance.

If you have done any thesis or have written papers in your college courses, (which involved researching, collecting material, compiling a paper) put that in your resume. You might, even if you are a fresher, be considered for the quality jobs.

Some good news on the Pune LPO front. I hear of start up LPOs which are undertaking legal process work outsourced by Indian law firms. (Watch this space for news on such LPOs.)

For those setting out on a career in LPOs, the LPOs tackling local legal process outsourcing jobs are a safer bet to work for, than those which handle only offshored projects because the latter are at some time or other going to face a gap in between projects, which means you are going to be laid off at the end of the project.

An LPO which handles local work as well as offshored projects, will usually have projects the year round. So those of you looking to start a career in outsourcing, you should, at least initially, opt for those LPO firms which handle both local and offshored projects, if you don’t want frequent ‘breaks’ in your career graph.

All the best,

Types of Jobs in LPOs

To conclude the discussion in my last post, on the type of work you could find in an LPO.

Legal Research Projects: This is really enjoyable work but does require some experience in actually conducting research. Unfortunately, the syllabus for the LL.B. and the BSL.LLB. course followed in our colleges, does not provide any training in conducting legal research. However, the Masters’ degree course in Law does, and if you would like to be entrusted with this sort of high-end work it would be better if you equip yourself with an LLM from a good University. (Yes, that makes a difference!) Nevertheless, even that degree is useless if you do not have a grasp over the English language and a keen analytical mind.

A good researcher understands thoroughly the subject he/she is researching; is able to comb through, sift, and filter all the matter collected and ultimately judge what is relevant for the project and what is not. Many LPOs employ freshers to do the base research because freshers are cheap labor. Freshers do not take on the responsibility of deciding which material needs to be jettisoned and which retained, with the result that a load of every and each nugget of information on the subject is put up before the senior researchers, who do the ultimate sifting and filtering. This is a serious waste of time and money, with projects having killing deadlines.

The baseline is that in order to do legal research, you need to be either very good at legal analysis, or you just go get that LLM degree. In either case, make sure your English is good.

Drafting: While you may have been drafting documents, deeds and notices in Indian courts, drafting US and UK legal documents is not exactly the same thing. For one, although UK and Indian laws have a similar base, the legal language there is far superior. Each country also has a definite pattern of drafting documents, which you will learn once you jump into the drafting field, provided you have a flair for the language. This, coupled with a good legal degree, and a little bit of training from the LPO, and you could be all set to work on drafting documents.

Legal transcription: While this generally figures as low end work, it is extremely difficult to get good legal transcriptionists in India, which is the reason why few LPOs handle it. Nowhere else is a command over the language as essential as in this field. Transcription is a process of listening to voice audios and transcribing as you listen and a good legal transcriptionist needs to be able to understand the accents of US and UK attorneys and have some knowledge of the laws of that country. In the US particularly, accents differ depending on the region. Moreover, most attorneys are overworked, harassed persons, whose dictations are peppered with asides and often garbled. Yet, accuracy is essential. Since transcription work often involves court orders and depositions, even a word out of place could prove fatal.

Legal editing: This is the easiest of all LPO jobs. All you need is knowledge and excellence in every other field of work!!! The bright side is that you don’t need to be too tech savvy and you are allowed to be temperamental.

Next post: What would I look for in a prospective LPO employee?

If you have any inputs, criticisms, brickbats, whatever, it would be helpful if you post comments, rather than e-mailing me.