Law Firms
Now in Demand, New Lawyers in India Get Higher Salary Offers
Posted Mar 14, 2008 7:37 AM CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
The marketplace may help boost the salaries of fledgling lawyers from India, who are increasingly in demand, to do routine legal work for American law firms and companies because of their low costs.
About 100 legal process outsourcing companies employ Indian lawyers, offering their services abroad at bargain prices, the ABA Journal reported in an October 2007 story, "Manhattan Work at Mumbai Prices."
But these lawyers' low salaries may soon be rising, if competition for new lawyers has an effect. International law firms are snapping up recent law grads from India in anticipation that the Indian market will eventually allow foreign firms to open offices there, the Economic Times reports.
Now Delhi University is reporting that 24 law firms, legal process outsourcing companies and corporations have come to recruit from its Campus Law Centre, and some students are getting offers far above the average, the Times of India reports. Leading law firms from abroad are participating in the recruitment process for the first time.
‘‘It is for the first time that so many recruiters are coming to CLC,” one student said. "What they have offered me was unexpected.''
Two other law schools report that many of their grads have landed jobs abroad. At one of the schools, Nalsar University of Law, Hyderabad, about half its graduates landed jobs outside the country, according to the Economic Times story. Allen and Overy has been a leader in recruiting Indian legal talent, the story says.
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Comments
J.D.
Mar 14, 2008 8:00 AM CST
If the ABA sits silently as American law firms pass up recently-graduated, debt-ridden American lawyers for slave laborers on the other side of the globe, then the ABA can go F$!@ itself. Don’t expect me to pay any ABA dues.
According to the ABA article linked above, these foreign lawyers make “an hourÂly rate about 80-90 percent less than what Americans do.” If that is going to be acceptable, then the ABA should advocate bringing slavery back to the US. It would be the only way we can compete. Of course, I guess the ABA is already there with their open-border, pro-cheap illegal alien labor agenda.
The ABA is showing it couldn’t care less about the American worker, whether he be a construction worker or an attorney.
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Unemployed JD
Mar 14, 2008 8:21 AM CST
Couldn’t agree more. It’s great to see Indian law grads’ employment opportunities take off as a result of American firms, while American law grads are increasingly unable to find any type of work. Way to go, ABA! Way to go, Big Law!
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msg
Mar 14, 2008 10:11 AM CST
How long is going to take young lawyers or any lawyers for that matter (and I am one and have been for the last 14 years after I was in the corporate world with my MBA) that law is nothing more than another business! This bull*!#%$! about being a high-class “profession” is nothing but a scam to charge outragious fees and to continue the aristocracy of big law!
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3L
Mar 14, 2008 10:36 PM CST
The practice of law is a business - why is it so hard to accept that singular fact? Businesses act to make profit as their primary goal, the creation of jobs is a secondary effect of that goal. Firms don’t simply exist to help law grads get jobs. The whole point is to make money and run a good business.
If law firms can reduce cost by outsourcing to well-qualified lawyers in other regions, then that is their right to do so. Consumers in the US can choose to avoid such lawfirms if they believe this practice to be “un-American” in any way. The minute law grads in the US agree to working at the rates that these firms pay law grads from other regions, the market will automatically open up. Granted that the cost of living will make this salary far from substantial, but that’s not the law firms’ problem to fix.
A business runs to make profit - right now, there is no profit in paying as much as $160k per 1st year grad or even as little as $40k per 1st year grad. That’s just the nature of a capitalist market - the quicker we accept it, the quicker we’ll be able to work alongside it rather than moaning and groaning about jobs being sent overseas.
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ariel Troncoso
Mar 15, 2008 1:57 PM CST
What I see are large law firms willingly participating in a transnational profiteering scheme. The outsourcing of legal work has become a “business” to some who profit handsomely inside and outside of the U.S.A.
The American law school graduate is no longer an “economically viable commodity”. This “globalization strategy” has become the norm as the profiteering continues.
We American students are left to the wolves trying to pay off loans, and passing the bar. If there aren’t any jobs for lawyers, then less for paralegals and others in law.
I have thought seriously of becoming a police officer. Good pay, overtime, three years in patrol and you can then try for detective. After 20 years you can retire. You don’t need a J.D. or Bar card to serve your community.
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J.D.
Mar 16, 2008 11:36 AM CST
What the globalist posters above fail to understand is that capitalism works only if those participating in the marketplace have a sense of right and wrong. Traditionally, Americans never had to question whether Ford, for example, would operate within the best interests of American society. Businessmen had a sense of allegiance to the country that helped make their business possible.
But today, the globalists care not about the nation state or the people at all. That is sad and pathetic. Especially if they have grown with taxpayer monies or tax breaks, generally.
During WWII, numerous American automobile factories willingly converted to tank and airplane factories to help with the war effort. Yes, they profited from it, and that’s good. And they also helped stave off more attacks from the Japanese and the Germans. Also good.
BUT IMAGINE if we had a similar situation with Japan or China today. We wouldn’t have any factories left to convert. The lack of national pride inherent in the globalist agenda would be our downfall as a nation, and it would benefit our enemy. This is but one example.
Regardless, the ABA should be looking out for American lawyers. Otherwise, it is an irrelevant organization.
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