Offshored or Outsourced Legal Services

To clarify terminology, outsourcing refers to using any third party to provide services previously provided by full-time employees; offshoring refers to outsourcing to a non-domestic provider; insourcing refers to shifting work to an owned-and-operated facility that is centralized and physically separate from the rest of the organization.

Legal outsourcing refers to the practice of a law firm obtaining legal support services from an outside law firm or legal support services company. When the outsourced entity is based in another country the practice is sometimes called Offshoring. Legal Outsourcing has gained tremendous ground in the past few years in the United States. Legal Outsourcing companies, primarily from India, have had success by providing services such as document review, legal research and writing, drafting of pleadings and briefs and providing patent services. In-house law departments of major multinational corporations outsource some of their work in order to save costs. While it will not be prudent to list those firms here for confidential reasons it is expected that as they move to save costs they will outsource more work. Initially, the Asian subcontinent were targets for different types of outsourcing with the legal field gaining traction. However, in recent years the so called "near shore", "back-door" "specialized legal firms" have sprung up to satisfy law firms and corporations that demand quality and confidentiality. Source: Legal outsourcing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Offshored or Outsourced Legal Services in India

In India, legal education is based on common law and conducted in English, requiring two or three years of classes. The country produces about 80,000 law school graduates a year, according to ValueNotes, compared with about 44,000 in the United States.

Outsourcing has become one of key ‘ingredient’ in formulating overall corporate strategy for many U.S companies to succeed in today’s emerging and highly competitive global marketplace. It is now being considered as one of “must-do” management practices for companies to excel globally. For many companies, it has strengthened their competitive position, predominantly true for companies competing via offering low cost for their products and services. The prior success in outsourcing non-core business activities to low wage but higher skill countries has triggered many U.S companies to explore new opportunities in outsourcing. This will enable them to boost their firms’ profits while maintaining high quality of services rendered. Following the exodus of IT & IT enabled services (ITES); outsourcing of legal services to India seems to be next lucrative opportunity for many U.S companies.

Are your lawyers in New York or New Delhi?

By Daniel Brook

Outsourcing legal work to India began in 1995, when the 34-lawyer, Dallas-based litigation firm of Bickel & Brewer opened an office in Hyderabad. Co-founder and co-managing partner Bill Brewer, who is 53 years old, explained that the idea was hatched when he was out to brunch with a relation by marriage. The relative, C. S. Prasada Rao, was originally from India. "We were looking for new ways to be more efficient in handling the millions of pieces of information that confront us in each case. I'm not sure how it came out of the conversation but somewhere a light went off. I asked, 'You can have a lawyer for how much an hour in India?' He said, 'Two dollars an hour.' We didn't make it to dinner before we were setting up the subsidiary in India."

Bickel & Brewer has since spun off its Hyderabad office, run by Rao, into a separate company called Imaging & Abstract International, which handles work for Bickel & Brewer as well as other American clients. In 2001, General Electric added a legal division to a currently existing base of operations in India to handle legal compliance and research for two of its divisions, GE Plastics and GE Consumer Finance.

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