Legal research growing globally please click here for pdf version of the article
U.S. firms using services of outsourcing companies
By Moushumi Anand
Medill News Service
Posted Thursday, December 21, 2006
Ruby Prasad’s legal research and briefs regularly find their way into courts across the United States despite the fact her workstation is located 8,000 miles away in India. Prasad is among the 200 lawyers working for Chicago-based Mindcrest Inc., which has an outsourcing facility in Mumbai. Mindcrest and other legal outsourcing firms are experiencing explosive growth.Mindcrest is 10 times the size it was two years ago. According to George Hefferan, vice president and general counsel, Mindcrest plans to add 200 more employees by the end of 2007.
Atlas Legal Research, another legal outsourcing company with offices in Bangalore, India, and Fort Worth, Texas, also grew tenfold in the last two years. The company employed three attorneys in India in 2004. Today, it has 30. Legal outsourcing companies provide services to legal departments of corporations and law firms from their foreign facilities. The companies, based in India and elsewhere, conduct legal research, document review, due diligence reports of mergers and acquisitions, administrative work, and draft legal documents. “During my association with an Indian law firm at the start of my career, I realized that I was more interested in doing work relating to legal research and drafting than practicing law,” said Prasad, 28, who has never been to the United States.
Forrester Research projects legal outsourcing will be a $4 billion industry by 2015, creating 79,000 jobs in India alone. While legal outsourcing companies use workers in a diverse group of countries, including the Philippines, New Zealand, Mauritius, Sri Lanka and Australia, a majority are located in India. Indian legal research firm Value Notes projects the legal outsourcing industry will grow tenfold in India during the next 10 years. Carol Silver, senior lecturer at Northwestern University’s School of Law and a member of the transnational law committee of the American Bar Association, said the interest in outsourcing was prompted by rising legal costs. “Lawyers and in-house legal departments of corporations use outsourcing as an opportunity to push down costs,” she said.
Paul Bernstein, president of the Chicago Bar Association’s law office technology committee, agreed. “The research work done by lawyers in other countries is excellent. It is a fraction of the cost (of legal services here), and the turnaround time is faster, too.”
An outsourcing firm charges between $25 and $90 an hour for work done by an attorney. Similar work done by an attorney in the United States can cost between $120 and $250. India’s legal system and education system make it a preferred destination to which to outsource work.
“India has a common law system with similar torts and level of complexity, and that kind of training is sufficient for the work the legal associates do,” Bernstein said. He added that the time difference — 11¨ hours — is another advantage. As lawyers finish their work in the United States, a new work day begins for legal associates in India. Bernstein said that enables the associates to get the research ready for attorneys in the United States before they return to work the next morning. Rocky Dhir, president of Atlas Legal Services, called it a “win-win-win” for all parties. According to him, clients are able to pay lower legal fees, attorneys can practice law rather than be buried in paperwork and legal outsourcing companies get more work. But the trend has caused some concern for the Illinois Paralegal Association.
The 1,500-member organization’s board of directors distributed a letter to 300 Chicago area companies asking them to use paralegals instead. The letter stated that work done by paralegals is quality controlled and cost efficient. It added that experienced paralegals perform high-level substantive work under direct supervision of an attorney at lower billing rates than attorneys. Caren Mansfield, the association president, said the association’s guidelines ensure that paralegals behave ethically and maintain confidentiality, and the same might not be true
for people working outside the country. Silver said there is also concern about whether law firms get their clients’ consent before they outsource work. Despite the worries, Bernstein said the trend is here to stay.
“Whether I like it or not, this is the way things are,” he said. As for Prasad, she says it’s been good for her career. “I visualize a bright and promising future for those associated with legal process outsourcing services,” she said.
