Outsourcing to India draws Western Lawyers

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/business/global/05legal.html

by vorg • 16 years ago

38 45 16 years ago

c1sc02• 16 years ago

As the crisis moves forward we will probably see a fraction of every profession moved to developing countries. Either by Western professionals who move there to enjoy the lower cost of living or outright replacement by outsourced professionals. So this doesn't really surprise me.

I've started to think about outsourcing as a long-overdue redistribution of wealth & as such I'm not opposed to it: if you can work more efficiently by outsourcing, you should outsource. Most employees in the West are spoiled brats & deserve to be shaken a little anyway.

Setsuna3• 16 years ago

>Most employees in the West are spoiled brats & deserve to be shaken a little

How do you prove this?

tomjen3• 16 years ago

He doesn't, this is a discussion forum not a journal article.

We don't require you to cite sources.

c1sc02• 16 years ago

Most people in the West are way higher up on Maslow's pyramid than people in the developing world. There's no arguing with basics like availability of clean water, food, clothing, healthcare. After your basics are covered it's up to you to decide whether you work your ass off improving yourself or settling for the status quo of luxury that living in Western society provides.

Whenever I come back from a developing country I think "We're fucked & we deserve it". People in developing countries are just as capable & ingenious; they are more likely to work hard because they see a path of progress in front of them. In the West we have become so accustomed to our luxuries that instead of working harder, we settle for the status quo far too often.

vorg4• 16 years ago

"Most employees in the West are spoiled brats & deserve to be shaken a little anyway."

Many have been shaken a lot by the effects of outsourcing.

gaius6• 16 years ago

But no-one wants to live in a world like that. Imagine

    * All airlines are like RyanAir
    * All restaurants are fast food
    * All supermarkets are Lidl
    * All music is Autotune
    * All clothes are polyester

A race to the bottom is stupid and ultimately self-destructive, the money you save in the short term you lose tenfold in the long term when everything you actually want is bespoke because the middle-market mass producers have all been bankrupted.

jimbokun• 16 years ago

Doesn't sound that far off from the world we actually live in.

cynicalkane4• 16 years ago

So if we outsource stuff to India, all the sit-down resturants in the United States will be forced to close?

What?

grammaton• 16 years ago

"Most employees in the West are spoiled brats & deserve to be shaken a little anyway."

Sure, we should know our place like good little slaves, right? Hauteur and arrogance are not a valid basis for rational argument.

arethuza2• 16 years ago

Lawyers have always got one eye on who holds the risk regarding professional negligence claims - if offshore companies are willing to assume this risks and are insured then I can see them being pretty popular for some kinds of work.

I can imagine some pretty interesting international litigation arising from this!

pmccool• 16 years ago

From the article:

"Employees at legal outsourcing companies in India are not allowed by Indian law to give legal advice to clients in the West, no matter their qualifications. Instead, legal outsourcing companies perform a lot of the functions that a junior lawyer might do in a American law firm."

Given that they're not giving legal advice, I can't see them assuming the risk of professional negligence claims.

dantheman2• 16 years ago

As technology has improved the capital investment required to develop a modern economy has greatly reduced. Improvements in communications, computers, electronics, and shipping can allow anywhere to become a modern city -- e.g. dubai. So I'd expect skilled workers to move to cheaper areas and maintain/improve their quality of life.

sasvari2• 16 years ago

As I second to that in principal, I do also have my doubts. India, China and the other emerging economies do have some drawbacks regarding quality of life (some more, some less): infrastructure, legal system, existing and/or arising environmental problems ..., just to name a few. Most western countries still have advantages of location, which might get more important in the nearer future. Just some thoughts ...

arethuza2• 16 years ago

There is also a movement to using "neutral" countries as locations to arbitrate serious international commercial disputes as an alternative to normal litigation.

vorg4• 16 years ago

Although quality of life in the whole of India or China is less than in the West, quality of life in a well-defined portion (e.g. city area) of these developing countries will often be competitive, e.g. Dalian in China.

As for infrastructure, I recently rode on the recently completed Wuhan to Guangzhou high-speed railway, cruising at average speed of 330km/hr, now the fastest railway in the world.

India beats China regards reliability of legal system, though many Shenzhen-based ventures use Hong Kong for legal activities. And of course India's internet is more open.

loewenskind• 16 years ago

>move to cheaper areas and maintain/improve their quality of life

Why would moving to a cheaper area improve your quality of life? If living there costs less the pay will be less as well. This wont hurt you with commodity goods too much because those will be cheaper but the things you'll probably like to have won't be much cheaper. For example, an iPhone 4 isn't going to come unlocked for $99 just because you're in India.

ivenkys• 16 years ago

Another day - another article on outsourcing. This is not particularly new or newsworthy i think. All kinds of grunt work across different industries will move to cheaper locations , its just inevitable.

vorg4• 16 years ago

India seems to remain THE outsourcing destination for information-based industries, whether software, legal work, accounting gruntwork, securities analysis or whatever. Seems like the last 4 yrs has seen a sudden growth in legal work going there which will no doubt transform that industry the way IT has been. Will Hollywood someday move everything to Bollywood, as Canada and NZ become more expensive?

mallipeddi2• 16 years ago

That's already happening: http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jun2008/gb2008...

CatalystFactory• 16 years ago

Can't wait for someone to sue for malpractice when confidential documents go viral, originating from a leak in India.

I believe the average case in India's civil courts is over 5 years and I would guess most companies are judgment proof and insurance won't cover outsourced work.

akshayubhat• 16 years ago

Pangea3 a firm mentioned in that report is funded by Sequoia Capital http://www.linkedin.com/pub/greg-mcpolin-esq/3/938/8a1

mattm• 16 years ago

Skimming through the comments on the NYT site, I thought this person offered the most insight:

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/0...

"I'm one of those U.S. lawyers who outsourced himself to India. I did not do it for lack of a job elsewhere. I'm a Columbia Law graduate and one of the founding partners of a successful New York and London-based media law firm. I went to India enthusiastically, to take part in a much-needed revolution in the way legal services are delivered in the West. Imagine a new legal landscape where high-quality services are affordable. Imagine deals getting done, because the attorneys don't kill them, with overlawyering and overcharging. Contemplate court cases and other disputes being resolved on their merits, rather than simply on the basis of whether one side cannot or will not pay the absurdly high costs of litigation. Think about legal professionals located in places that suit the interests of clients, rather than in the most expensive parts of the most expensive cities in the world. Consider the resultant savings when legal bills are based on services, not real estate. Envision deals and cases staffed by the most talented and enthusiastic lawyers available. Open your mind to the possibility that some of those lawyers are in India. I know from experience that they are.

..."

rsmith670• 16 years ago

I'm one of those U.S. lawyers who outsourced himself to India. I did not do it for lack of a job elsewhere. I'm a Columbia Law graduate and one of the founding partners of a successful New York and London based media law firm. I went to India enthusiastically, to take part in a much-needed revolution in the way legal services are delivered in the West.

Imagine a new legal landscape where high-quality services are affordable. Imagine deals getting done, because the attorneys don't kill them, with overlawyering and overcharging. Contemplate court cases and other disputes being resolved on their merits, rather than simply on the basis of whether one side cannot or will not pay the absurdly high costs of litigation. Think about legal professionals located in places that suit the interests of clients, rather than in the most expensive parts of the most expensive cities in the world. Consider the resultant savings when legal bills are based on services, not real estate. Envision deals and cases staffed by the most talented and enthusiastic lawyers available. Open your mind to the possibility that some of those lawyers are in India. I know from experience that they are.

And consider the fact that this kind of outsourcing actually creates more legal jobs in the West, rather than cutting them. Every time a deal is done, or a litigation is waged, because legal services are suddenly affordable, it means more work for the Western lawyers involved in supervision, editing, negotiating, and/or appearing in court. This is not only a dream. It is happening every day, thanks to legal outsourcing in India.

For example, a Fortune 100 client of my law firm specifically requested that the legal research and analysis needed for a series of multi-million-dollar deals in the U.S. be done by Indian attorneys at our offshore operation in Mysore. This is a situation where, if not for a Western law firm’s off-shoring capabilities, no lawyers would have been hired, because typical Western legal fees would have made it prohibitive. The work would have been done either in-house, or not at all. Because the India team made it possible for the deals to happen, Western law firms ultimately got more business, handling the otherwise non-existent transactions.

A similar phenomenon has happened in litigation, where corporate clients have chosen to defend themselves against meritless lawsuits, using both U.S. and Indian lawyers. The most high-profile examples are some of the cases filed in Los Angeles against comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. They have been dismissed instead of settled, because of the successful teamwork among attorneys in the U.S. and India. Without legal outsourcing, there might have been no U.S. lawyers hired for any significant litigation work at all, because frivolous cases often are settled at the outset, just to avoid the usual U.S. litigation costs. The off-shoring of legal work is leading to a new breed of benign tort reform, as defendants facing bogus or inflated tort claims are choosing to litigate and win. This in turn discourages such claims. And the money that otherwise would be spent by defendants on nuisance payouts can be plowed by corporations right back into the U.S. economy.

Does any of this threaten the existence of U.S. law firms? No, unless you want to define American law firms as inherently dinosaur-like, and incapable of changing to avoid extinction. No, the threat is not to law firms themselves, but to an outmoded model of law practice that clients increasingly will not tolerate. We are witnessing the start of a positive, paradigm shift in the way that legal services will be delivered in the West.

Some law firms are embracing the change, and reaping rewards from it. One example is our own law firm. As a result of setting up our own legal outsourcing company in India, our law firm is receiving more client revenue, not less. This is coming in part from (a) existing clients who send us “elective” legal work that otherwise would never be performed, due to cost, but which is not a problem when our U.S. lawyers are paid only to supervise and edit the work of attorneys in India, and (b) new clients who come to our law firm only because of our reputation for developing an alternative to the old model.

So there is no need to start making funeral arrangements for the U.S. legal industry. Forward-thinking law firms will adapt, embrace legal off-shoring, and learn how to make it serve not only the interests of their clients, but their own.

Russell Smith SmithDehn LLP SDD Global Solutions http://www.sddglobal.com

Outsourcing to India draws Western Lawyers

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