Outsourcing

Our Services

Our national practice offers extensive experience representing service providers and their customers in the structuring, documentation, evaluation and negotiation of complex domestic, cross-border, and global business processes, information services, information technology and telecommunications outsourcing arrangements. We have handled the outsourcing of a broad range of business processes, including:

• Financing
• Accounting
• Administration
• Customer service
• Logistics
• Education and training 
• Benefits plan management and human resources services

We have also handled the outsourcing of voice and data communications services, data processing services and operations, software applications development and maintenance, and mainframe, mid-range and networked (client-server) systems development, integration and operations.

The customer-side clients we counsel include corporations operating in a wide range of business sectors, including retail, insurance, financial services, health care, hospitality, transportation, telecommunications, manufacturing and food services industries.  With deep regulatory expertise in the insurance, financial services, health care, public utility, pharmaceutical, and telecommunications industries, we are especially capable of assisting customer-side clients in these regulated industries.  Our extensive experience as a full-service firm representing these and other industries—both regulated and unregulated—has provided us with the expertise to represent clients in virtually every business sector.  In addition to representing private clients, we represent government agencies in complex business process and information technology outsourcing transactions.  On behalf of our customer-side clients, we have worked on outsourcing transactions with virtually all of the major service providers.

The service providers we represent include some of the largest and most highly regarded providers of outsourced services in the world, and the transactions we handle are in diverse fields and industries, including electric utility, telecommunications, insurance, health care, chemical and energy, law and financial services.  Transactions include the outsourcing of global multifunction human resources services (benefit plan management, program policy and compliance, compensation, employee and labor relations, health affairs, employment and employee services, payroll, payroll operations, workforce planning, and mergers and acquisitions support) for a Fortune 50 company and the outsourcing of finance and accounting services for a Global 100 company.

We also provide counseling to clients on “insourcing”—the process of moving outsourced processes in-house; and co-sourcing—an approach that involves maintaining customer control of functions such as applications development while using a service provider to enhance efficiency and economy.

Our Value

Thorough knowledge of the practices and players in the outsourcing industry provides us with the experience and the tools to help our clients and their business partners build successful and lasting relationships.  Our broad knowledge and experience also facilitate access to, and credibility with, the service provider side of the industry, and a platform from which to campaign for change in the industry.  We are consistently among the thought leaders at industry events, advocating changes to make the industry more collaborative and more efficient. We speak frequently at industry conferences and have been recognized as among the elite in the outsourcing field.  Our practice and two of our partners are nationally ranked in the prestigious Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business (“National Business Process Outsourcing” and “Technology and IT Outsourcing” categories).  Additionally, HRO Today and FAO Today have repeatedly identified Sonnenschein as one of the top outsourcing firms in the country.  Following are some of the ways we set ourselves apart from the competition:

Experience

• We have extensive experience representing both service providers and customers.  Customers engage us with the knowledge that we understand their needs and the business offerings of their service providers and can structure a process that will lead to an effective outsourcing relationship.  We assist clients in identification of business risks, evaluation of competitive proposals and implementation of appropriate proposals.  Because we understand the business requirements of both parties, we are better able to resolve complex issues and help our clients build lasting outsourcing relationships.
• We have the expertise to assist clients in a number of highly regulated industries, including insurance, public utilities, health care, pharmaceuticals, financial services, and telecommunications.
• We have worked with our national Bankruptcy & Restructuring Practice to help debtors in bankruptcy use outsourcing to significantly reduce costs.
• While we recognize our duty to identify issues, we understand that our role is to help our clients find solutions.  We are uniquely able to identify and build consensus around solutions, and we take pride in our proven ability to add value to the transactions on which we are engaged.
• We work closely with lawyers from a number of our other practices, including Intellectual Property & Technology, Labor & Employment, Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation, Taxation, Environmental/Energy and Real Estate.
• Sonnenschein’s outsourcing lawyers were among the first to develop expertise outsourcing applications development and maintenance, call center, and finance and accounting services to India.  We worked with domestic service providers as they established significant operations in India; we were engaged by Indian owned and operated service providers as they began to provide services to U.S.-based clients; and we have, over the last five years, worked on a significant number of offshore to India outsourcing transactions.  Representative transactions include the representation of a leading university in connection with applications development and maintenance outsourcing to India.

Geographic Scope

Our clients have given us the opportunity to represent them on six continents.  In addition to our outsourcing work in the U.S., the international aspects of outsourcing transactions have taken us to the U.K., France, Germany and Switzerland, as well as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates.  With offices across the U.S. and in Brussels and with time-tested relationships with leading law firms around the world, we handle the most complex multinational transactions.