The roundtable discussion included a leading legal outsourcing blogger Ron Friedmann of Prism Legal Consulting. One of the key observations of the group was the conclusion that the exploding demand for legal professionals to perform document review will lead to the integration of offshore legal professionals into the teams of domestic contract lawyers currently performing such tasks.

While I agree with the conclusion of the group regarding the usage of offshore resources in document review, I differ with the group on one item: the timeline. For some leading-edge law firms and corporations handling large-scale litigation, the future is now.

India’s growing legal services industry is, to a large extent, focused on serving the West, and not all of the companies are small and family-owned. Manthan Services, in Bangalore, is one of the largest legal-services companies in India. With 140 employees, including 80 attorneys, Manthan aims to be the premier Indian company providing legal services and research and analysis to the U.K. and U.S. markets. The company is not managed by attorneys but, rather, by business entrepreneurs.

Manthan, attracts young lawyers with the promises of meritocratic advancement, valuable on-the-job training, a work environment of mutual respect, and better pay. Young lawyers respond to this because the legal profession is not regarded as highly in India as it is in the U.S., for several reasons. Indian society is not litigious. Lawyers are viewed as a last resort. Lawyers must practice for years to earn the respect instantly awarded to, say, a recently graduated medical doctor.

The legal industry also lacks the professional organization it enjoys in the U.S. Most firms are actually composed of single advocates who take on an associate or two, which means employment for recent law grads is limited. Although half of all law-school graduates are women, most women graduates decline to practice law in India. They follow other career paths, start families, etc. These young professionals face a daunting employment environment; the Wall Street Journal reported (September, 2005) that India’s 500 law schools graduate approximately 200,000 attorneys a year.

The supply of educated professionals exceeds demand, and their hopes exceed the opportunities. Into this vacuum arrives the promises of legal-services vendors like Manthan. The company maintains an active database of, at present, 5,000 legal professionals. The candidates are screened, interviewed, and kept on file for quick reference so they can be hired when a project starts. Manthan conducts interviews on law campuses, posts on job boards, and receives many referrals from existing employees. Increasingly, law grads are more savvy about the opportunities of legal-services vendors, and many have already heard of Manthan in particular.

These resources are being utilized by U.S. corporations and law firms alike to drastically reduce the cost of document review, particularly for large-scale litigation. Given their teams of ambitious attorneys, fast turn-around time is another selling point.

For more facts on the India’s legal educational system:
http://www.offshore-legal-services.com/knowledge3.htm

CEO Ram Vasudevan lives in New York and works out of QuisLex’s New York office. He earned his MBA at Cornell University and his law degree from Columbia University. His previous law-firm experience includes three years at Sidley Austin Brown & Wood and four at Skadden Arps.

COO Sundari Pisupati lives in Hyderabad with her family and works out of the Hyderabad office. She earned her five-year undergrad/law degree at the National Law School of India University (and was valedictorian) as well as a law degree from Columbia University. Her law-firm experience includes five years at Sidley Austin.

Together, they started QuisLex based on a shared realization: that a significant percentage of the practice of law involves work that can be done remotely by very bright individuals trained in U.S. law. Initially, U.S. clients are attracted by the lower cost of the legal support services completed by trained staff in India, but clients stay because of the efficiency and because of the quality of the work.. Confidentiality, of course, is the highest priority. Every employee is bound by confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements. No work-related issues are raised outside the office. Work cannot be carried outside the office. All printed matter is destroyed immediately after use. And all client-related work is uploaded onto a secure online server for security and version control.

Young lawyers are attracted to QuisLex because of its meritocratic principles. Traditionally, the practice of law in India has been, and to some extent still is, dominated by family-controlled law firms. Businesses like QuisLex, however, offer young attorneys the opportunity for advancement based on merit. Young attorneys are also motivated by the intellectual challenge of learning and mastering aspects of American law, which to them has the added cache of qualifying as international lawyers (and it pays on average about fifty percent more in salary). These young and ambitious attorneys also understand the context of the industry in which they are participating. This nascent industry has the potential of growing into a multi-billion-dollar market. Forrester Research predicts that the equivalent of $4.3 billion in U.S. legal wages will be outsourced overseas by 2015.

For more on QuisLex, go to www.offshore-legal-services.com/knowledge2.htm for photos and a profile of one of their young lawyers.

The short article takes the reader through a quick analysis of the first two stages of the "great Indian services-export boom" and indicates that India is entering the third stage of offering a wider spectrum of increasingly sophisticated business process outsourcing activities.

Legal outsourcing is part of this third stage and The Economist reports:

The law, in fact, illustrates how vast is the untapped potential market. About $250 billion is spent on legal services world-wide, about two-thirds of it in America, and as yet only a tiny proportion goes offshore. Forrester, a research outfit, has estimated that, by last year, 12,000 legal jobs had moved offshore, and forecast that this will increase to 35,000 by 2010. India, with its English-language skills and common-law tradition is well-placed to secure a big share of the business..

In addition, Joy London, in her December 18th blog entry, provides an excellent analysis of a recently released report by Value Notes entitled Offshoring Legal Services to India.

In the coming weeks, I will post my analysis of the report based upon my experience interfacing with a wide variety of the companies listed in the report.

In his New York Times bestseller The World is Flat, author Thomas Friedman outlines how the world became flat and what it means to us as we create the future in this newly flattened world. Trade and political barriers have been removed, and the technical advances of the digital revolution have made it possible to do business instantaneously with billions of other people across the planet.

What does this mean to you? You will be part of a global legal services industry in the years to come, where the name of the game will be accomplishing the legal task with the right person, at the right price, in the right place, within the right timeframe.

This can mean both new opportunities and obstacles for you. It may be in your best interest to focus on “non-fungible work” (work that cannot be easily digitized and transferred to lower-wage locations) as opposed to “fungible work,” which includes electronic discovery (subjective legal review), contract review, patent drafting, and legal research and writing.

Fungible work can easily go offshore. A shared British common law heritage, coupled with excellent law schools and an ample supply of attorneys, will make it practical and profitable to send work to India or even Sri Lanka, as digitization increases. Purchasers of legal services will unbundle fungible tasks and go to lower-wage countries to get such tasks performed. Corporations will continue to seek to close a perceived “price/value gap” in legal services, and pressures to reduce overall legal spend will drive the costs of legal services down. Law firms will look at reducing cost structures for fungible services that support the practice of law, and consolidation of larger firms will occur to achieve cost efficiencies.

All in all, the transformation of the profession of the law to the business of law, will accelerate.

What will you need to succeed in this changing environment? A sense of entrepreneurship will serve you well, whether or not you work for a law firm, a corporation, or for yourself.

Secondly, take the global view. You and your colleagues will be needed on the front lines, leading the team, and doing the higher value work. Unlike Indian lawyers, for instance, you are licensed to practice law here in the US. Offshore lawyers may perform document review and other tasks in the background, but their work must be coordinated and reviewed by a US attorney.

Most of all, be adaptable.

And one other thing: please don’t give up on that inspired notion that you can change the world for the better. It’s our charter as professionals, and as human beings.