Outsourcing

Job of the Week: Land of the Free, Home of the (Atlanta) Braves

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They don’t call it “HOT-lanta” for nothing. Hiring is heating up in the south, and if you’re a corporate attorney with experience in outsourcing and software systems acquisition transactions, then the latest Job of the Week, brought to you by Lateral Link, is a home run.

Position: Corporate Associate

Location: Atlanta, GA

Description: Atlanta firm is seeking a corporate associate with 2-4 years experience to practice in the outsourcing area. The ideal candidate will have previous experience working on offshore and onshore outsourcing transactions and on software systems acquisition transactions. Prior work experience in a relevant IT or consulting field is important.

If you are currently a Lateral Link member please see position #6495 on the Lateral Link site. If you are not a Lateral Link member, you can sign up for free at www.laterallink.com. If you are interested in this position or any other positions in Atlanta or the Southeast, please contact Scott Hodes directly at shodes@laterallink.com to discuss this position and other opportunities in the Southeast.

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ABA Ponders Accrediting Offshore Law Schools

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In August, 2008 the ABA issued a landmark ethics opinion allowing the outsourcing of U.S. legal work.

This August, the ABA is pondering whether to accredit offshore law schools that follow the U.S. system. Because apparently 200 accredited U.S. law schools just isn’t enough. The National Law Journal reports:

The American Bar Association is already tasked by the U.S. Department of Education to accredit U.S. law schools. Now an ABA committee has recommended that it should seriously consider expanding that power to overseas law schools that follow the U.S. model.

In June, the ABA’s Council of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar appointed the committee of law professors, attorneys, judges and law deans to examine whether foreign law schools should be allowed to seek ABA accreditation. The council is scheduled to consider the committee’s recommendations in December.

Globalization, baby! Catch the epidemic fever…

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Could Technology Turn The Tide Against Legal Outsourcing Overseas?

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“Believe me, kiddos, this is bad news for all of us.”

As many websites and blogs (including ATL) mentioned last week, The New York Times published an article by Heather Timmons entitled “Outsourcing to India Draws Western Lawyers.” The quote above was from the blog Shilling Me Softly giving its take on the article. As you can probably discern from The Times headline, the piece was very favorable toward legal outsourcing taking place overseas…

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Quote of the Day: No Impure Thoughts at Hughes Hubbard

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It’s not that we’re snobs. It’s because we couldn’t trust it. The reason clients pay us what they pay us is because they know we’re 100 percent quality control.

– Hughes, Hubbard & Reed partner Kenneth A. Lefkowitz in a New York Times/City Room story about outsourcing.

Non-Sequiturs: 08.05.10

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Alleged shoplifter Shannon Marketic, in happier times.

* Congratulations to the best LGBT lawyers under 40! Check out the list — perhaps you know some of them? [National LGBT Bar Association]

* Speaking of gays in the law, if you’re obsessing over Judge Vaughn Walker’s sexual orientation, stop it. Just stop it. [Huffington Post]

* First Rudolph Giuliani’s daughter gets busted shoplifting beauty products, and now the same thing happens with a former Miss USA. The lesson: beauty products are way too expensive. [CBS / Crimesider]

* You think legal outsourcing is only going to affect the lives of junior associates? As Larry Ribstein explains, it’s very likely that outsourcing will lead to a fundamental change in the way we regulate lawyers and law firms. [Forbes]

* The only person who can get away with acting like Judge Judy is Judge Judy. [Bad Lawyer]

* Ann Althouse thinks peep-toe shoes are just fine — and has fabulous taste in shoes herself, by the way. [Althouse]

* How come all of the top philanderers are men? That’s just sexist. [Law and More]

Outsourcing: Here Come the Expats

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Well, it was only a matter of time before the lawyers started to go where the work is. And, if you’ve been paying attention, you know that the work is in India.

Western-trained lawyers are heading to India, to manage the country’s burgeoning legal outsourcing resources. From the New York Times (gavel bang: WSJ Law Blog):

India’s legal outsourcing industry has grown in recent years from an experimental endeavor to a small but mainstream part of the global business of law. Cash-conscious Wall Street banks, mining giants, insurance firms and industrial conglomerates are hiring lawyers in India for document review, due diligence, contract management and more.

Now, to win new clients and take on more sophisticated work, legal outsourcing firms in India are actively recruiting experienced lawyers from the West. And U.S. and British lawyers — who might once have turned up their noses at the idea of moving to India or harbored an outright hostility to outsourcing legal work in principle — are re-evaluating the sector.

Mumbai to 8,743,800 rupees? Not quite, not yet at least…

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Firms Don’t Want to Talk About Outsourcing

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Are Biglaw firms outsourcing legal work, or not? We don’t know, because apparently firms don’t want clients to know. The ABA Journal reports that most firms declined to even answer an outsourcing questionnaire:

About 83 percent of the 30 responding law firms declined to participate in the survey, according to Fronterion, the Chicago-based outsourcing consulting firm that conducted the study. Fronterion managing principal Michael Bell believes a majority of top law firms are using legal outsourcing providers, at least on an ad hoc basis, but they are reluctant to admit it because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Apparently all that criticism of the quality of international LPOs has made firms afraid to talk about outsourcing.

But since we’re dealing with top law firms, not talking =/= not doing…

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We Knew This Was Going to Happen: Michigan Encourages Law Grads to go to India

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Is this a “terrible job” or “the inevitable future of the legal economy”? Note: those two answers aren’t mutually exclusive.

The University of Michigan Law School — the 9th-best law school in America — is now posting job opportunities from India.

Has it really gotten bad enough that graduates from a top law school should consider international LPO opportunities? Yes, yes it has….

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Outsourcing: It’s Not Just About the Money

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It’s been a while since we checked in with the coming junior associate apocalypse that is legal outsourcing. Rest assured, LPOs around the globe are working hard to make sure that the Biglaw junior associate becomes extinct — at least as we know it.

There’s a fascinating article on Law21 that discusses the evolution of legal process outsourcing — and what LPOs need to do next:

Still in its relative infancy, legal process outsourcing has already had a huge impact on the legal services marketplace: scoring major deals with the likes of Microsoft and Rio Tinto, garnering the attention of private-equity investors, and helping to expose the degree to which law firms have overcharged for the simplest legal work, among other accomplishments. But this impact has set off two important chains of events.

The first affects LPOs themselves: they now need to move their value proposition beyond cost savings in a market they helped to make more sophisticated. The second affects everyone: the legal profession’s response to LPO is having an unexpected effect on how legal work is distributed and how legal resources are allocated.

Some law firms still seem to be fighting the last war and are committed to fending off outsourcing until the bitter end. But other firms are preparing themselves for the next war: remaining the primary legal advisor to their clients in a world where the clients themselves can go to a number of providers to get the work done…

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  • 09 Apr 2010 at 12:44 PM

Why I Don’t Trust Them Foreigners

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I have always held a special place in my heart for Georgetown University. I was born on campus at Georgetown University Hospital. My father received his J.D. from the Law Center, and I am an alumnus of Georgetown Prep. I was also very lucky to attend Hoya basketball games as a child and watch Patrick Ewing dominate the college ranks.

Now I have another reason to love Georgetown: Jim Michalowitz. You see, Georgetown University Law Center is one of the few schools with an e-discovery blog. I have highlighted it before on Gabe’s Guide. So you can imagine how thrilled I was to discover that Jim had actually taken time out of his busy schedule to write a response to my ATL post that was highly critical of the legal outsourcing of e-discovery work to non-attorneys here and overseas.

With the title, “You Can’t Trust Them Foreigners – Outsourcing Document Review,” it’s of little surprise that Mr. Michalowitz — advisory board member of Georgetown University’s CLE e-Discovery Institute, Six Sigma enthusiast, and proponent of foreign legal outsourcing — took a different take on the issue.

And, you know what? He was so right. I just don’t trust them foreigners. I didn’t know it until I read his post, but it all makes perfect sense now.

Here are some of Mr. Michalowitz’s conclusions about my original arguments against outsourcing legal work to non lawyers:

  • My position on legal outsourcing was extreme
  • Using foreign or non-attorneys would equal a poor or lower quality work product
  • Foreign lawyers might as well be considered non- or “not-real” lawyers

Mr. Michalowitz brings up some good points; however, he either has some fundamental misunderstandings of — or is falsely characterizing — my views on legal outsourcing. So, I thought that I would take the time to nicely clarify any misconceptions he might have. Oh, and by nicely, I mean, I am coming like the Clash of the Titans, because I am about to release the Kraken, after the jump.

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Legal Olympics Update: Outsourcing E-Discovery Sliding Down Slippery Slope, at Record Speed

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outsourcing biglaw aba tsunami.gifEd. note: Gabe Acevedo, who covered LegalTech for Above the Law earlier this month, will be writing for these pages about legal technology.

Recently, Steven C. Bennett, the chair of Jones Day’s E-Discovery Committee, published an article [PDF] in the Northern Kentucky Law Review entitled “The Ethics of Legal Outsourcing.” In his article, Bennett relied heavily on a six page ethics opinion [PDF] issued by the ABA in August of 2008. When the ABA Formal Opinion 08-451 was released, many legal process outsourcing companies (LPOs) — the companies that hire overseas attorneys to do the work of American attorneys at a fraction of the cost — lauded it as an “endorsement” of their work. As Bennett noted in his article, the opinion even referred to outsourcing as something that was “salutary,” in that it would reduce costs for clients.

Those LPOs had a right to be celebratory about ABA 08-451. After all, never in the history of the United States was there ever an ethics opinion of any Bar Association that had done more to undermine the standing of both American attorneys and our practice of law.

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Outsourcing: It’s Cheap and Easy to Do.

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outsourcing biglaw aba tsunami.gifI’ve been trying to be optimistic about the future of Biglaw in 2010. There’s no harm in hoping for the best.
But I’m positive that 2010 will see more outsourcing of American and British legal jobs to India. And from the perspective of junior Biglaw associates or current law students, that trend does not lead them to a good place.
The Times of London (gavel bang: Am Law Daily) has an excellent expose on Pangea3, an Indian company doing work that used to be done by junior attorneys in the U.K. Once again, we see that law firm managers — and their clients — have compelling cost reasons to ship legal work overseas:

Much of the work that Pangea3 and similar firms deal with, such as drafting derivatives contracts or conducting due diligence for mergers and acquisitions, was once the preserve of trainees and associates at big City law firms. Some of those firms racked up annual revenues of more than £1 billion during the boom years, in part by billing out teams of junior lawyers for up to £300 an hour for even the most routine tasks. …
Whereas a new recruit at a “magic circle” firm in London can expect a starting salary of about £60,000 — rising to more than £90,000 at the best paid firms — Pangea3 can pay a good Indian law graduate as little as £350,000 rupees (£4,700) a year.

Those are powerful numbers. And apparently it’s not even all that hard to start one of these companies.
Details after the jump.

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