LPO News

Fresh American graduates are being paid increasingly high remuneration in the past four years. The costs of consulting senior legal professionals have spiral-headed and touched $ 1500 an hour. Clients are constantly pushing law firms in the United States to send basic legal tasks to India where they enjoy a conspicuous labor arbitrage benefit. English-speaking and skilled lawyers, comfortable with the common-law doctrines, are working round the clock in Legal Process Outsourcing Centers across the country at $ 20 an hour.

The firms are reacting to a phenomenon which will move about 50000 legal jobs overseas by 2015, according to Boston based Forrester Research Inc.

Says Robert Profusek, co-head of the mergers and acquisitions practice at Jones Day in New York:

“The objective is to have only the most valuable people in London or New York, and the others in India, China or Columbus, Ohio,”

Companies with in-house legal departments in India include Wilmington, Delaware-based DuPont Co., San Jose, California-based Cisco Systems Inc., and New York-based Morgan Stanley, according to ValueNotes Database Pvt. The Indian legal services industry will more than quadruple to $640 million by 2010 from $146 million in 2006, Maharashtra, India-based ValueNotes said.

“General Electric sends about $ 3 million a year in routine legal work to its Indian affiliate”

“India has very talented lawyers, but it’s a misconception that you can just send work there and it gets done. You need proper supervision and security.”

Says Janine Dascenzo, the Fairfield, Connecticut-based company’s managing counsel for legal operations.

It is often that clients are pushing firms like Kirkland and Ellis, the seventh-largest law firm in the United States to offshore labor-intensive tasks.

“I’m not an advocate of offshoring legal services, but having worked in this area for so long, I understand the value of the model”

“Typically, clients hire a provider and Chicago-based Kirkland helps manage the attorneys”

Says Gregg Kirchhoefer, a senior partner in the firm’s outsourcing and technology transaction practice.

Source: bloomberg.com