Outsourcing

ABA Delays Decision on Whether to Accredit Foreign Law Schools

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Protectionism? You betcha!

Bowing to pressure from arguably every unemployed or underemployed American-trained attorney, the American Bar Association has delayed its controversial decision about whether or not to start accrediting foreign law schools. Back in August, we told you that the ABA was thinking about unleashing foreign-educated attorneys upon bar examinations across the country. And apparently on this one rare occasion the ABA chose against flooding the market with even more attorneys when there are not enough jobs to go around.

Should attorneys be openly happy about this blatant protectionism? I don’t know — have you tried to get a job in this market?

The only thing global competition is going to do is push down legal salaries, while having zero effect on the cost of legal education….

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Facebook Status Update of the Day: Well, they can’t send bartending jobs to India.

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In case you’re having a hard time reading the update in the screenshot, we transcribe it below.

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Thomson Reuters Exploring Sale of BAR/BRI, Will Acquire Pangea3

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Hang onto your hats, your legal world is about to get rocked. At least behind the scenes.

Thomson Reuters, owner of West Publishing and BAR/BRI is selling BAR/BRI. The reports have been confirmed by people who are enrolled in BAR/BRI. They all received an email from the company tonight.

Above the Law obtained a copy of this stunning email containing the news….

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ABA Asks Obama To Make India Play Fair

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Lawyers complain but Obama won't listen.

If you’ve been following along with the trend towards outsourcing over the past few years, you know what American lawyers are up against. Indian lawyers can do American legal work… while American attorneys are shut out of India’s (large and growing) legal market.

As many of you know, President Obama recently fled traveled to India, and ABA president Stephen N. Zack is begging Obama to use his international goodwill to convince India to stop acting like dicks in an exclusionary fashion with respect to American lawyers and law firms.

Zack’s arguments are simple ones, based on sound business practices, free trade, and fundamental fairness. Yet these arguments haven’t worked on Indian legal authorities, and apparently Obama isn’t any more receptive…

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We Love It When Peter Kalis Tells Us How the World Works

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Outsourcing; you might have heard of it. It’s the trend whereby law firms send high man hours/low brain effort work overseas to workers who can complete the tasks at a fraction of the cost. Clients love it, consultants are pushing it, and law firms are struggling to add this new efficiency opportunity into their overall business model.

Well, not all law firms. Peter Kalis, managing partner of K&L Gates, gave a quote to the Legal Intelligencer where he called outsourcing “a gnat in an elephant’s ear.” Evidently, K&L Gates is the elephant, LPO’s are the gnats, and I’m not sure who the clients are supposed to be. Perhaps Peter “Aesop” Kalis can let us know in a future fable.

It’s not that Kalis has his head in the sand when it comes to cost savings that can be generated by moving work out of places like New York and Washington. It’s just that in his world he doesn’t view Mumbai as all that different from Pittsburgh.

Maybe he’s right about that?

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Quote of the Day: Well, the Economy Is In the Toilet….

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“Knowledge Economy”

An environment in which a person has run up $150,000 in student loans to pay for a law degree only to see jobs exported to India whose citizens are apparently very knowledgeable about the U.S. legal system.

Example: “The best job in the knowledge economy is plumbing because nobody with an advanced degree knows how to use Drano.”

– a Yahoo! Finance article on office buzzwords to avoid

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Back to the Future: What the J.D. Class of 2011 Can Learn From Indian Law Students in 1930

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This has all happened before, and this will all happen again. So say we all. At the beginning of the recession, just weeks after Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008, we brought you a New York Times article from 1990 that illustrated the similarities between the tough legal job markets created by Bush 41 and Bush 43.

Today, we run the DeLorean even further back in time, and to an entirely different country. A loyal reader was cleaning out his office and came across an article from The Law College Magazine of Bombay, India, from 1930. The piece is entitled: “Is It Worthwhile? A Frank Talk With Budding Lawyers.” And it’s all about whether a person should pursue a two-year law degree in India in the 1930s.

Folks, let me tell you: some people worry that India will become the new market for American legal jobs, but that’s not the real fear. The real fear is that American law students will become like Indian law students in 1930.

And maybe that process is already well underway….

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Consultant Says 17,500 Non-Partner Biglaw Jobs ‘At Risk’

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I like paying attention to what consultants say about the Biglaw market. It offers a fun little insight into what people think partners want to hear.

The ABA Journal reports that consultants at Hildebrandt think partners want to hear that they can still fire people — lots of people:

Writing for the blog of law firm consultant Hildebrandt, Lisa Smith makes an argument that outsourcing, efficiencies and increased hiring of staff attorneys could mean a different mix of staff and associate lawyers—and an overall reduction in head count in the next five to seven years.

Hilderbrandt expects an overall reduction of headcount of 17,500. But not partners! Just associates and staff attorneys…

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Protectionism Finds a Home in Ohio

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Lawyers are terrified of outsourcing, and there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of movement in the legal industry towards keeping entry level legal jobs in America.

But outsourcing didn’t start with low level legal work, and so maybe the reaction against it won’t start in the legal field either. Maybe the counter movement will start in Ohio.

Ohio Governor Ted Strickland just instituted a new ban on outsourcing back-end IT services by the Ohio government. The Wall Street Journal reports:

India’s main software body Wednesday termed the U.S. state of Ohio’s decision to ban technology outsourcing to offshore locations as an “electoral rhetoric” that will be counterproductive, while Infosys Technologies Ltd. said it is concerned about the message from the step.

The Economic Times newspaper said Ohio has banned outsourcing of government IT and back-office projects to offshore locations such as India.

Hey, ABA you might want to pay a little attention to Governor of Ohio. I bet a lot of your constituents wouldn’t mind a little lawyer protectionism just at the moment, globalization be damned.

India Software Body Calls Ohio Ban ‘Electoral Rhetoric’ [Wall Street Journal]

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Why India and Not Indiana? A Case for Taking e-Discovery ‘In House,’ Literally

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In keeping with the highly optimistic “dey terk er jerbs” story lines of the last couple of weeks, such as Elie’s on how outsourcing could be great for associates, I thought I would address how attorneys working remotely on e-discovery projects could actually be a good thing for the future of Biglaw.

A couple of years ago, I was a legal recruiter for a small staffing agency placing contract attorneys on e-discovery projects in the Washington, DC area. The attorneys constantly asked me the same questions: “Is it true this is all going away?” Or, “Is all doc review really heading to India?”

I would respond by telling them not to worry about India, because the real threat would be coming from Indiana…

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