Outsourcing
Outsourcing Firms Hiring as More Complex Legal Work Goes to India
Posted Nov 26, 2008 12:26 PM CST
By Molly McDonough
Three years ago when Ankita Mullick joined the legal outsourcer Pangea3 from a Mumbai firm, she mostly spent time doing research on U.S. laws involving drug labeling.
But this year, Mullick and her colleagues are working for banks on auction-rate securities. The Wall Street Journal reports in a careers section article that the sophistication of outsourced legal work is increasing.
And while technology outsourcing companies aren't growing much in India, legal outsourcing firms are beefing up their ranks. The trend is bolstered by a lagging U.S. economy, where law firms are being pressured by clients to trim fees wherever possible.
Pangea3 tells the WSJ that it has doubled revenue in the past six months, though it won't reveal actual figures. And its rival, Computer Patent Annuities Ltd., with offices outside New Delhi, is expecting to have 1,200 Indian lawyers on staff by next September and 2,000 by 2010.
Talat Ansari, a partner at New York's Kelley Drye & Warren, tells the WSJ that the outsourcing industry is now equipped "with cheap Indian lawyers who are pretty smart doing the sort of work done here by paralegals." His firm uses Indian lawyers for document review and to standardize contracts.
Reed Smith also reports feeling the pressure to outsource.
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Comments
Lisa Solomon
Nov 27, 2008 10:54 PM CST
Although the Wall Street Journal article that is the subject of this story (along with the accompanying WSJ Law Blog post), focus on foreign outsourcing by large law firms, it overlooks the realities of practice for small firms and sole practitioners, who comprise the majority of American lawyers.
There is a growing cadre of independent US-based contract lawyers who generally provide unique, individualized services to small firms and solo practitioners. This work is less subject to commoditization than the document review work for corporations or large firms that forms the majority of legal work that is shipped abroad. Nevertheless, small firms and sole practitioners are no doubt facing at least as much pressure to trim their fees as large firms are experiencing; in fact, the individuals and small companies that comprise the client base of many small firms are likely even more cost-sensitive than the big companies that are represented by BigLaw.
These circumstances—combined with a recent ABA ethics opinion (Formal Op. 08-451) that explains the benefits of using contract lawyers, analogizes contract lawyers to associates (but without the overhead), and clearly states that it is ethical to earn a profit on the work performed by contract lawyers—present an unprecedented opportunity for independent US-based contract lawyers who can clearly communicate to potential hiring attorneys the benefits that they and their clients can obtain through outsourcing.
You can find a complete analysis of this issue at http://tinyurl.com/5j56ae.
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