As you evaluate translation service providers, you’ll likely consider multiple criteria. Subject matter expertise, turnaround times, and customer care are just a few. Yet onboarding, or the process of familiarizing new clients with a product or service, is as important for a successful partnership. When it’s done well, legal teams enjoy a seamless experience—with quick legal document translations and ongoing support. When it’s done poorly, it creates barriers and drives customers to switch language service providers (LSPs).

So, how do you evaluate an LSP’s onboarding process? It all starts by asking questions. Here are a few to consider:

Do they have a pre-planned onboarding process?
How long does it typically take to onboard a client?
Which technology platforms do they use? Can they connect with yours?
Will you have a dedicated onboarding team?

A great LSP will have a pre-designed onboarding plan that can be customized to meet your needs. That should include assigning you an account manager, a project manager, and a customer success team who will work together to ensure a smooth transition.

3 Components of Legal Translation Onboarding

An LSP should make onboarding as simple as possible for clients. Yet providing guidance on how a service or platform works is only a small part of the process. Legal translation onboarding includes both technical and operational components such as:

Technical onboarding. The LSP connects translation technology with an e-discovery platform such as Relativity. This enables clients to request multilingual legal document translations within the e-discovery platform, which increases accuracy and reduces turnaround times.
Language technology onboarding. The LSP prepares for incoming requests by connecting with legal machine translation technology and creating a glossary and translation memory. This helps drive efficiency and speeds up delivery.
Operational onboarding. The LSP briefs clients on financial management, analytics reporting, and accessing customer support. This simplifies the relationship, and streamlines the administrative process.

All three components remove barriers to requesting translations and completing projects.

Why Adequate Onboarding Matters

Without an established onboarding process, connectivity problems may arise. This leads to longer translation turnaround times, missed deadlines, and other complications.

When onboarding takes too long, the client and the LSP may need to temporarily rely on alternative methods of communication to meet tight deadlines. However, this may pose security risks for legal teams. Before you send any sensitive documents, confirm that the LSP has privacy and security solutions in place for the platform—especially email.

With proper onboarding, legal translations are faster, simpler, and more secure.

Why Choose Lionbridge for Multilingual Legal Translations?

At Lionbridge, we’ve mastered onboarding, so you can focus on translation projects. Below is an overview of the process that enables us to get you onboard and provide same-day translations.

Advanced Technology

Global litigation can involve tens of thousands of documents. Accessing, reviewing, and preparing them for translation is difficult and time-consuming. That’s why we offer technology that streamlines the process.

First, there’s Lionbridge Translator for Relativity®. Our proprietary platform helps global law firms and corporate legal departments effectively and efficiently deliver cross-border e-discovery and other multilingual assets within the Relativity platform.

Second, our machine translation technology can translate thousands of documents within minutes, which frees up your time and reduces overhead costs. Instead of relying on a large team of bilingual contract lawyers to complete the first review, machine translation does it for you.

Third, we create glossaries and translation memories, which supplement our technology to help produce better outcomes and reduce turnaround times. This reduces repetitive tasks that can slow down the process for the legal translator and project manager alike.

Superior Customer Support

Beyond technology, we offer the individualized customer support you need to ensure every legal translation project is a success. A dedicated account manager, project manager, and customer success team are all ready to help you get started.

A Simple Transition

Now, if you already have a translation service provider, you may be hesitant to switch to a new one. You may worry that the transition will take too long or that it will be too complicated to transfer all your files. Fortunately, this isn’t the case when you switch to Lionbridge.

Our onboarding team will assist you at every step of the transition. This includes providing guidance on how to:

Retrieve assets from your outgoing provider.
Best manage legacy assets moving forward.

We already work with 94% of the AM Law 100, so your law firm may already have an account set up with us. All you’ll need to do is transfer your pending translation projects.

Legal onboarding meeting to discuss translation project

Final Thoughts

Whether you’re a first-time legal translation buyer who needs more clarity or a seasoned professional who is switching LSPs, be sure to ask about the onboarding process. A translation partner that has taken the time to develop a plan will have the expertise and the resources you need to ensure every translation project is a success. While efficient onboarding may seem like a minor detail, it can make all the difference.

Want to learn more about our legal translation services? Contact a Lionbridge sales representative today.