Bar & Bench News Network
Outsourcing to India Draws Western Lawyers
The New York Times reports on how the Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) in India is drawing legal talent from abroad. Chritopher Wheeler, an Assistant Attorney General from New York has made his shift to a suburb of New Delhi where he handles Pangea3, a legal outsourcing firm with a team of 110 plus lawyers under his wing.
According to Greg McPolin, Managing Director of the company’s litigation services, Pangea3 gets more resumes from US lawyers. The Indian lawyers who are employed at these LPOs do the work usually assigned to a junior lawyer in the US who handle issues varying from document review, due diligence, contract management etc.
In order to attract more clientele and work, LPOs in India are looking to recruit experienced British and US lawyers. The number of LPOs in India has jumped from 40 in 2005 to 140 in 2009. Revenues are expected to be at Rs. 1,980 crore ($440 million) this year, an uptake of 38 percent from 2008.
David B. Wilkins, Director Harvard Law School says, “There is an increasing pressure by clients to reduce costs and increase efficiency and with companies already familiar with outsourcing tasks like information technology work to India, legal services is a natural next step.”
There are many more in the playing field of LPOs with Leah Cooper, who left her job as a managing lawyer for a giant mining company in order to operate as Director for CPA Global which is one of the top Indian LPOs with a presence of more than 1500 lawyers spread over Europe, US and India.
Clifford Chance is yet another top tier law firm to enter the LPO pool. Mark Ford, Director for Clifford Chance Knowledge Center, New Delhi has 30 Indian law school graduates who serve Clifford Chance’s global offices. Ford lived in India for six months to set up the center, and now manages it from London. General Electric and UnitedLex an LPO follow suit.
Moving to a legal outsourcing firm, especially in India, is not for everyone. About 5 percent of Western transplants cannot handle it and move back home, managers estimate. Some find it hard to adapt to India. Other times, the job itself does not suit them.
Legal eagle switches sides
The Times of India reports how eminent criminal lawyer KTS Tulsi will now represent the CBI in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case. The CBI sprang a trump card in the court on Monday when it flew in KTS Tulsi as its lawyer to press for remand of former MoS for home and law Amit Shah in 2006 and 2007.
Denial of reasons for verdict is denial of justice, says Supreme Court
DNA reports on how the Supreme Court has ruled that failure to justify a judgment is ‘denial of justice’. It has directed the lower courts to pass a judgement backed with good reasoning. The Judges have to give reasons for their finding in order to let the affected party know why the judgement has gone against their favour.
The Bench held, “Right to reasons is an indispensable part of a sound judicial system and reasons at least indicate an application of mind to the matter before the Court.’’
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- 1. "I'm one of those U.S. lawyers who outsourced themselves to India. I did not do it for lack of a job elsewhere. I'm a Columbia Law graduate and one of the founding partners of a successful New York and London based media law firm. I went to India enthusiastically, to take part in a much-needed revolution in the way legal services are delivered in the West. Imagine a new legal landscape where high-quality services are affordable. Imagine deals getting done, because the attorneys don't kill them, with overlawyering and overcharging. Contemplate court cases and other disputes being resolved on their merits, rather than simply on the basis of whether one side cannot or will not pay the absurdly high costs of litigation. Think about legal professionals located in places that suit the interests of clients, rather than in the most expensive parts of the most expensive cities in the world. Consider the resultant savings when legal bills are based on services, not real estate. Envision deals and cases staffed by the most talented and enthusiastic lawyers available. Open your mind to the possibility that some of those lawyers are in India. I know from experience that they are.And consider the fact that this kind of outsourcing actually creates more legal jobs in the West, rather than cutting them. Every time a deal is done, or a litigation is waged, because legal services are suddenly affordable, it means more work for the Western lawyers involved in supervision, editing, negotiating, and/or appearing in court. This is not only a dream. It is happening every day, thanks to legal outsourcing in India.For example, a Fortune 100 client of my law firm specifically requested that the legal research and analysis needed for a series of multi-million-dollar deals in the U.S. be done by Indian attorneys at our offshore operation in Mysore. This is a situation where, if not for a Western law firm’s off-shoring capabilities, no lawyers would have been hired, because typical Western legal fees would have made it prohibitive. The work would have been done either in-house, or not at all. Because the India team made it possible for the deals to happen, Western law firms ultimately got more business, handling the otherwise non-existent transactions.A similar phenomenon has happened in litigation, where corporate clients have chosen to defend themselves against meritless lawsuits, using both U.S. and Indian lawyers. The most high-profile examples are some of the cases filed in Los Angeles against comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. They have been dismissed instead of settled, because of the successful teamwork among attorneys in the U.S. and India. Without legal outsourcing, there might have been no U.S. lawyers hired for any significant litigation work at all, because frivolous cases often are settled at the outset, just to avoid the usual U.S. litigation costs. The off-shoring of legal work is leading to a new breed of benign tort reform, as defendants facing bogus or inflated tort claims are choosing to litigate and win. This in turn discourages such claims. And the money that otherwise would be spent by defendants on nuisance payouts can be plowed by corporations right back into the U.S. economy.Does any of this threaten the existence of U.S. law firms? No, unless you want to define American law firms as inherently dinosaur-like, and incapable of changing to avoid extinction. No, the threat is not to law firms themselves, but to an outmoded model of law practice that clients increasingly will not tolerate. We are witnessing the start of a positive, paradigm shift in the way that legal services will be delivered in the West. Some law firms are embracing the change, and reaping rewards from it. One example is our own law firm. As a result of setting up our own legal outsourcing company in India, our law firm is receiving more assignments and client revenue, not less. This is coming in part from (a) existing clients who send us “elective†legal work that otherwise would never be performed, due to cost, but which is not a problem when our U.S. lawyers are paid only to supervise and edit the work of attorneys in India, and (b) new clients who come to our law firm only because of our reputation for developing an alternative to the old model. So there is no need to start making funeral arrangements for the U.S. legal industry. Forward-thinking law firms will adapt, embrace legal off-shoring, and learn how to make it serve not only the interests of their clients, but their own.Russell SmithSmithDehn LLPSDD Global Solutionshigh-end legal outsourcingLink". Russell Smith, Mysore, India - New York - London
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The Viewpoint: Indemnification Provisions - Is the fight on the indemnity clause worth the effort?
May 17, 2012 | Bar & Bench brings to you the twentieth article on 'The Viewpoint' series with its Knowledge Partner AZB & Partners. AZB Senior Associate Nandish Vyas and Associate Pranati Ishwar in this article seek to examine the context in which indemnification rights are relevant for acquisition transactions, and also seek to explore if there are areas where they are potentially not worth the comments (4)
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