A new
Livonia company is using resources in India and
the United States to help lawyers write briefs
and conduct legal research.
LegalEase
Solutions is an attorney-support enterprise that
enables lawyers to outsource time-consuming tasks.
Partners Tariq Hafeez, an attorney, and Tariq
Akbar, with an engineering and business background,
hope their business will flourish with the forecasted
growth of such legal services.
"We're
not competition for attorneys, we're a support
system for attorneys and work only for them,"
said Hafeez, who once worked for Michigan Attorney
General Mike Cox.
"I
know outsourcing is a bad word to some, especially
here in Michigan, but legal outsourcing is different,"
Hafeez, 28, added. "We're helping attorneys
in this country do more, increase their client
capacity and increase their business."
The
one-year-old company relocated from their homes
in Canton to a Livonia office three months ago
in the Five Mile-Farmington area.
The
duo, who have been friends for 15 years and both
have family in India, coordinate a team of seven
full-time, India-based attorneys and six contracted
U.S.- based attorneys for the outsourced legal
tasks. With their staffs on opposite ends of the
planet, this enables LegalEase Solutions to staff
a 24-hour work force. So far, the company has
handled tasks for 33 clients in 12 states.
The
company's primary services include legal research
and writing, pre-litigation support, preparation
of trial and appellate-level pleadings and briefs,
documentary review, discovery and patent services.
"We
have bright attorneys who offer convenience and
quality," Akbar, 30, said. "We can hit
the ground running, with little direction, and
turnaround these tasks in a short period of time
and save our clients hundreds of hours of work."
So
far, LegalEase Solutions primarily works with
small law offices. The company's contract work
enables these firms to save on the expense of
hiring a full-time associate.
"We
just help them out as they need us," Hafeez
said. "They only have to pay for services
as they need them."
The
duo hopes to grow their business by networking
at attorney conferences across the country, contacts
via their Web site (www.lgles.com) and by advertising
in legal publications.
They
also lean on their clients to promote them through
word of mouth.
"We
have to nurture these relationships to grow,"
Akbar said. "Building that trust with our
clients will help us do that."
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