Indian Lawyers Handling Outsourced Work Do More Than Document Review

Outsourcing

Indian Lawyers Handling Outsourced Work Do More Than Document Review

Posted May 12, 2008, 06:03 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss

The market for outsourced legal work is booming in India. While lawyers there are doing a lot of routine work, they are also handling some interesting legal matters, including work for the makers of movies and television shows.

The legal outsourcing industry has grown by about 60 percent a year in the last three years, the Washington Post writes. A lot of the work is going to India, boosted by e-discovery rules that produce thousands of pages of documents in lawsuits that require a careful—and potentially expensive—review, ABAJournal.com noted last month.

While Indian lawyers handle a lot of document review, they also do legal research and draft contracts, said Russell Smith of the Indian outsourcing company SDD Global Solutions. Indian lawyers even did legal work on Borat and drafted a motion for HBO's Da Ali G Show seeking the dismissal of a libel suit against the show’s producers, Smith said.

"My people in India can do everything from here, except sign the opinion letter and appear in an American court," Smith told the Post. Because of the low cost, the producers of Da Ali G Show opted to fight the lawsuit rather than settle, he said.

Kunoor Chopra of outsourcing firm LawScribe said his lawyers in India receive training in contract writing, review and research. They also get some writing instruction to help them change their writing style. "They write in flowery, British-style English," Chopra told the Post. "It is almost like an unlearning process. They have to be retrained to write in crisp, short sentences."

Srinivas Pingali, executive vice president at the legal outsourcing company Quatrro, said his firm is prospering despite the economic downturn in the United States. New work relating to bankruptcies is now providing new opportunities for Indian lawyers, he told the newspaper.

Indian lawyers may be happy to get U.S. legal business, but the bar there is not as amenable to U.S. law firms opening in the country. A 1961 rule bars foreign firms from practicing in India. Three foreign law firms, including the U.S. firms Chadbourne & Parke and White & Case, opened offices in the country and are challenging the rule, Legal Blog Watch notes. India's High Court heard final submissions in the case last month, the Economist reports.

Related coverage:

ABAJournal.com: "Hollywood Outsourcing Higher-End Legal Work to India"

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Posted by Steve Perkins - 6 months, 2 weeks, 5 days, 6 hours, 59 minutes ago

I came to law from the I.T. industry. There, the initial panic over offshoring has started to subside a bit… as companies grew smarter and more sophisticated in their practices, and people came to realize that the sky isn’t falling. Some projects aren’t feasible to offshore due to culture differences (Indian developers tend to prefer detailed instructions and can be adverse to questioning things, while American culture tends toward independance and questioning everything). Other things aren’t feasible due due to privacy/security considerations (i.e. regulatory issues with sending certain types of information overseas). Of course, the biggest obstacles are those 12 time-zones of seperation.

So, while I can’t say that there has been a REVERSAL of offshoring in the I.T. industry, the hype has definately subsided and realization set in that only certain things are offshore-able. The legal field presents even more barriers, in that some American lawyer has to put his bar license and malpractice insurance on the line in signing off on every piece of work product. Some firms will push the envelope to see how it works, but I suspect they will re-learn many of the lessons already leaned by the I.T. industry.

The last paragraph made me chuckle. For all the gnashing of teeth about xenophobia or proctectionism in the U.S., we are light-years beyond 99% of our critics. Most other countries who take issue with our trade and migration policies would never in a million years take in the ratio of goods and immigrants that we welcome… no matter how far along they develop economically in the future.
Posted by Bill - 6 months, 2 weeks, 5 days, 3 hours, 35 minutes ago

What bothers me about this trend is the number of law students and recent grads who can’t find work. I’m sure U.S. law students would happily do this work for the same pay as these Indian lawyers (in lieu of not working at all), quite probably do a better job, and not have to have video cameras monitoring them.
Posted by CB - 6 months, 2 weeks, 5 days, 2 hours, 52 minutes ago

Bill - I think you overestimate entry-level pay at one of these offshore firms.
Posted by JT - 6 months, 2 weeks, 5 days, 2 hours, 34 minutes ago

How about the illegal practice of law? These are not attorneys licensed to practice in the United States, that appear to be doing U.S. legal work. If I am a client that loses any kind of case in the U.S., I am asking if any offshore legal work took place. Then I am going after that firm for use of unlicensed attorneys.
Posted by associate - 6 months, 2 weeks, 5 days, 2 hours, 26 minutes ago

It’s all fun and money until the malpractice claim hits.
Posted by Former Outsourcer - 6 months, 2 weeks, 5 days, 2 hours, 16 minutes ago

In a prior life I worked on project to outsource jobs to india for a major U.S. company. We hired Phd level employees at a rate of $5,000 to $7,000 per year. The real expenses came from telecommunications and infrastructure at about $25,000 per person per year. So, given the telecom expenses would be fairly negligible, one could hire an indian lawyer “all in expenses” for probably around $15k per year maximum.
Posted by Informed - 6 months, 2 weeks, 5 days, 1 hour, 6 minutes ago

To No.6:

I highly doubt it, with the exchange rate at $1=Rs.40 or thereabouts, that would mean the Indian attorney would earn Rs.50,000/month. Mid-level managers in large Indian corporations earn way more than that per month. Indian Corporate lawyer salaries for first year associates typically range in the neighborhood of Rs.100,000 to Rs.125,000, double your calculations but still significantly cheaper than your average BIGLAW first year associate in the US.
Posted by Another Former Outsourcer - 6 months, 2 weeks, 5 days, 43 minutes ago

#6 is probably close. A recent NY Times articles said that Indian lawyers are paid $12,000.
Posted by CDF - 6 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, 22 hours, 38 minutes ago

My number one concern is that many lawyers and accountants are outsourcing confidential documents to these foreign companies, often without informing their clients that their personal information is being sent halfway around the world.

While I acknowledge the cost effectiveness of outsourcing this data, how many clients would be agreeable to the outsourcing of their legal and accounting work?
Posted by Maria - 6 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, 17 hours, 4 minutes ago

From CA State Bar self study CLE on fee splitting: Chambers v.
Kay (2002) __ Cal.4th __ [2002WL 31444916 (Cal.)] (“Chambers”) giving a definitive interpretation of rule 2-200. As you
know, rule 2-200 provides that a member of the State Bar “shall not divide a fee for legal services with a lawyer who is
not a partner of, associate of, or shareholder with the member unless. . . [t]he client has consented in writing thereto
after a full disclosure has been made in writing that a division of fees will be made and the terms of such division. . . .“ and this does not necessarily address the issue that these are not attorneys admitted to the CA bar…
Posted by Just a Thought - 6 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, 3 hours, 29 minutes ago

This is part of a sad trend in outsourcing to places like India. Given the increasing delicacy of the US economy, I wonder when companies will realize that by sending these (& customer service) jobs abroad, they are contributing to the decreased buying power of US consumers, and ultimately thier own financial base. If your customers have no jobs/income, to whom will you sell your services—to countries with laws in place to prevent you from penetrating their market (because they are smart enough to “protect” their economies)? Open markets and a so-called global economy aside, by saving a few bucks in the short-term, are companies/firms ultimately dooming their own long-term financial viability?
Posted by NCLawyer - 6 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 22 hours, 15 minutes ago

“significantly cheaper than your average BIGLAW first year associate in the US.“ But not necessarily significantly cheaper than mid-level associates at small or medium size firms who don’t have to be trained on cultural and language differences, who can talk to you in your own time zone and sign the paper themselves without waiting for some other firm to put their mark (and their mark-up) on it. Someone, I might add, who lives and works in the community, pays taxes there, sits on the school board or runs an annual charity event, i.e., someone who might have sense of service to the community beyond the fee.

Any decent firm in the US can streamline the routine parts of practice by training paralegals and secretaries to do the routine parts of the job, which can still be done under the close supervision of the attorney licensed to practice in the relevant jurisdiction, as the licensing authorities envisioned. The greed of BigLaw management and the general disrespect for law rampant in corporate culture have lead to treating the practice of law as if it were the same as manufacturing widgets. (Ditto for the practice of medicine.) This is not to say that the Indian lawyers themselves aren’t highly trained and ethical, but it seems sad to me that American lawyers would aid and abet the corporate world’s race to the bottom where compensation for services are concerned. Particularly when it will come at the expense of young lawyers in the United States who are facing enormous student loan payments. For every Biglaw associate earning way more than he/she is worth, there are 100+ others who are grateful to have a job that allows them to live in a halfway decent neighborhood, drive a used car and pay their student loan on time. I.e., Lawyers who do their jobs without whining that they didn’t get a giant bonus for not wetting themselves the first time they went to court for a calendar hearing.

If you are one of the “lucky” few who got BigLaw jobs right out of lawschool, congratulations, your hard work paid off. Just make sure you get training in a variety of areas in order to give yourselves options when you are replaced in a few years by lateral hires who got better experience in smaller firms and did not cost BigLaw a dime to train. Because if Biglaw is willing to outsource the jobs you could do, what kind of security do you really have? Better use those big first year salaries to pay off the loans before you get dumped. (It happened to two of my friends, it could happen to you.)

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