Our Services

Our national practice offers extensive experience representing service providers and 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
• Learning and education
• 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 regulated and unregulated industries has provided us with the expertise necessary to represent clients in virtually every business sector.  In addition to representing private clients, we have represented governmental agencies in complex business process and information technology outsourcing transactions.  We have, on behalf of our customer-side clients, worked on outsourcing transactions with virtually all of the major service providers. 

Our attorneys have represented service provider clients that include some of the largest and most highly regarded providers of outsourced services in the world.  We have represented our service provider clients in complex information technology outsourcing transactions to the electric utility, telecommunications, insurance, health care, chemical and energy, financial services, legal and other industries.  Transactions on behalf of our service provider clients have included the outsourcing of multifunction human resources services (including 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) on a world-wide basis for a Fortune 50 company and the outsourcing of finance and accounting services for a Global 100 company.

Demonstrating our extensive range of capabilities and experience, we increasingly counsel clients on insourcing—the process of moving outsourced processes in-house.  We also advise clients in connection with co-sourcing—an innovative process by which customers maintain control of functions such as applications development while using a service provider to enhance the efficiency and economy within the organization.

Our Value

Thorough knowledge of the customs, practices and players in the outsourcing industry provides us with the experience and the tools necessary to help our clients and their business partners build successful and lasting relationships.  It also provides access to, and credibility with, the service provider side of the industry, and a platform from which we may campaign for change in the industry.  We are consistently among the leading thinkers at industry events, advocating changes to make the industry more collaborative and more efficient.  We speak on a regular basis at industry conferences and have been recognized publicly as among the elite in the outsourcing field.  For example, our practice and two individuals are nationally ranked in the prestigious Chambers USA:  America’s Leading Lawyers for Business in the National Business Process Outsourcing category and in the Technology and IT Outsourcing category and we have been repeatedly cited as one of the top outsourcing firms in the country by both HRO Today and FAO Today magazines.  We set ourselves apart from the competition in a number of ways, including:

Experience

• Unlike most law firms, 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 are able to assist our customer clients in the identification of business risks, the evaluation of competitive proposals and the implementation of appropriate proposals.  Because we understand the legitimate business requirements of both parties, we are better able to help our clients build lasting outsourcing relationships and resolve the complex issues that need to be dealt with to make any outsourcing transaction successful.
   
• With deep expertise in a number of highly regulated industries, including the insurance, public utility, health care, pharmaceutical, financial services, and telecommunications industries, we are uniquely qualified to assist clients in those regulated industries.
   
• We have worked with our national bankruptcy practice to help debtors in bankruptcy use outsourcing as a tool 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 are assisted by lawyers from a number of other practices in the firm, including intellectual property, labor and employment, employee benefits, tax, environmental 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.  While a majority of our cross-border outsourcing work has been between the U.S. and India, the international aspects of outsourcing transactions have taken us to England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Brazil, Chile, India, Argentina, Mexico, Australia, Japan, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Costa Rica, Ireland, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, South Africa, and Canada.  With 14 offices spanning the U.S. and Brussels and with time-tested relationships with leading law firms around the world, we handle the most complex multinational transactions.

Representative Client List

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