It is commonplace for global organizations to employ dozens or even hundreds of law firms to meet their various legal needs. Inevitably, in doing so a great deal of money is spent on legal translation services for cross-border and multilingual dealings. Companies often leave these legal translations to their outside counsel to handle. While this may seem the simplest solution, it forfeits an opportunity to simultaneously keep costs under control, improve efficiency, and ensure absolute quality across all legal translations. This is where a centralized language service provider can make all the difference and help you consolidate your complex multilingual litigation translations with one expert provider.
Negative Attributes of Uncoordinated Legal Translations
Corporations that outsource their decision to outside counsel to choose various third-party providers face several challenges. With translations spread out, it becomes confusing to manage multiple vendors and invoices, and it is easy to lose track of spending. Vetting data security policies, guaranteeing consistent terminology or accuracy in translations and ensuring reliable and efficient support and quality standards across vendors all present additional challenges. It becomes increasingly challenging for the corporation to mitigate these risks and comprehensively ensure the accuracy of multilingual litigation translations.
A corporation that allows outside counsel to handle its legal translation work faces three distinct challenges:
- Cost — We know of one corporation whose third-party attorneys contracted 72 different translation services in 2018 alone. That’s a significant annual spend. Unfortunately, with translations spread out in this way, a corporation is left with no chance to benefit from the discounts that such a hefty billing should merit.
- Quality — With each law firm (presumably) vetting and hiring its own translators, the corporation has no way to guarantee consistent terminology or accuracy in the translations upon which its business activities depend. In addition to bearing the potential for undermining the success of current activities, inaccurate translations in legal documents can lead to significant future problems. As has been proven time and again, word choice can mean everything in litigation and with each local law firm hiring a different translator, the corporation lacks the means to mitigate such risks comprehensively.
- Vetting — Lastly, there is no way to be confident that third-party agents are selecting translators strictly on the basis of quality and pricing, and not due to some unstated relationship that has nothing to do with the corporation’s interests.
There are lasting benefits to working with an experienced language services partner. To ensure you understand and gain all the benefits of a consolidated legal translation strategy we are hosting a webinar with the Association of e-Discovery Specialists (ACEDS) with doeLEGAL, inc.
During our webinar, “Making One Call: Consolidating Costs for Complex Multi-Language Litigation,” we’ll discuss strategies to work with one provider who can deliver the answers to managing complex multilanguage projects to;
- reduce costs,
- improve transparency,
- increase accuracy,
- ease data security concerns,
- and improve efficiency.
The global nature of the business creates unique challenges with eDiscovery involving complex multilanguage documents. This is one area where consolidating tasks with one expert vendor saves time and money.
You can learn more about ACEDS, our webinar, and get registered today!
International corporations who use outside counsel can use these benefits without making any problematic internal changes or creating additional counsel work. Simply choose a reliable and experienced LSP to handle organization-wide translations and then tell each law firm under contract to obtain all future legal translation services from that LSP. Outside counsel can instruct the LSP on your behalf, which will immediately achieve greater efficiency, consistent quality, and cost savings for your corporation.
About Morningside
Morningside, a Questel Company equips the world’s leading organizations with a full suite of end-to-end intellectual property and language solutions. With over 4,000 clients in 55 countries, Morningside is globally recognized for its subject matter expertise and technology innovation in regulated markets such as IP, legal services, life sciences, and corporate compliance. Our IP management solutions and translation services ensure your ideas seamlessly reach new markets and audiences while allowing you to do more with your budget. Global 500 companies, international law firms, and regulatory bodies all rely on Morningside as a trusted partner to make intelligent choices for their most valuable assets.
Dylan Blaney, Vice President of Business Development, Morningside, a Questel Company, is responsible for the company's global legal translation strategy and maintaining relationships with the world's largest corporate legal departments and law firms. Dylan expertly advises law firms and corporations on best legal translation practices, specifically implementing workflows and technology that reduce cost, improve quality, and accelerate deadlines. He specifically focuses on international litigation & arbitration, FCPA, patent litigation, M&A, internal corporate communication & documentation to ensure adequate global communication in the legal marketplace.