Indian Lawyers Handling Outsourced Work Do More Than Document Review

Indian Lawyers Handling Outsourced Work Do More Than Document Review

Posted May 12, 2008, 07:03 am CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss

The market for outsourced legal work is booming in India. While lawyers there are doing a lot of routine work, they are also handling some interesting legal matters, including work for the makers of movies and television shows.

The legal outsourcing industry has grown by about 60 percent a year in the last three years, the Washington Post writes. A lot of the work is going to India, boosted by e-discovery rules that produce thousands of pages of documents in lawsuits that require a careful—and potentially expensive—review, ABAJournal.com noted last month.

While Indian lawyers handle a lot of document review, they also do legal research and draft contracts, said Russell Smith of the Indian outsourcing company SDD Global Solutions. Indian lawyers even did legal work on Borat and drafted a motion for HBO's Da Ali G Show seeking the dismissal of a libel suit against the show’s producers, Smith said.

"My people in India can do everything from here, except sign the opinion letter and appear in an American court," Smith told the Post. Because of the low cost, the producers of Da Ali G Show opted to fight the lawsuit rather than settle, he said.

Kunoor Chopra of outsourcing firm LawScribe said his lawyers in India receive training in contract writing, review and research. They also get some writing instruction to help them change their writing style. "They write in flowery, British-style English," Chopra told the Post. "It is almost like an unlearning process. They have to be retrained to write in crisp, short sentences."

Srinivas Pingali, executive vice president at the legal outsourcing company Quatrro, said his firm is prospering despite the economic downturn in the United States. New work relating to bankruptcies is now providing new opportunities for Indian lawyers, he told the newspaper.

Indian lawyers may be happy to get U.S. legal business, but the bar there is not as amenable to U.S. law firms opening in the country. A 1961 rule bars foreign firms from practicing in India. Three foreign law firms, including the U.S. firms Chadbourne & Parke and White & Case, opened offices in the country and are challenging the rule, Legal Blog Watch notes. India's High Court heard final submissions in the case last month, the Economist reports.

Related coverage:

ABAJournal.com: "Hollywood Outsourcing Higher-End Legal Work to India"

Why temping sucks and why you should earn a living on your own

 by Charlotte Attorney
This is coming from someone who temped for nearly a year and I understand that times are rough and every needs money. But, here in North Carolina there are numerous options available to a recently barred or out of work attorney.

Top Ten Reasons why Temping sucks
1. The Firm bills the client $250 per hour for you or more, Agency gets between $100-70 per hour for you, Agency in NC (rates in other places are little higher) give you about $20-25 per hour. Not to mention if you work in a downtown area you will be required to pay for parking which is not reimbursed by the agency or the firm.
2. When on a project you are often monitored like a child and your every move is being watched.
3. The staff attorneys and or associates on the case you are working on are not as smart as you. I don't care where their degree is from.
4. Recruiters from agencies are often rude, greedy, unprofessional, dishonest, and could careless.
5. While at the agencies headquarters or the firm, you are often denied access to the internet and use of your own cellphone. Which in fact makes you less productive and makes your life that much harder to take care of both personal and professional business.
6. Document review is mindless, mundane work.
7. You work crazy hours (10 hour days or more) and sometimes more than the associates. Except you do not receive the same respect, benefits, or pay (www.infirmation.com McGuire Woods and Womble first years are making 160K or more starting!).
8. Because there is little if any guarantee that a) the project will end tomorrow, b) you will be let go, c) how much overtime you will be allotted that week.
9. Because you took the bar and there is actually a shortage of practicing attorneys in NC. I will most that article after this one. (I will post this article shortly)
10. Because more and more document review projects are being outsourced to India and the US market will soon no longer assist. (I will post this article as well). Temporary these days literally means just that.

Ten Reasons why you should Practice
1. Theres a great need here in North Carolina for practicing attorneys particularly in an urban area like Charlotte where there about 1-2 Thousand attorneys in a population of almost 1 million. You are not in a large metropolitan city like NYC, LA, DC where other Attorneys have no real choice but to do this type of work for years.
2. Because you can make a decent living as a solo practitioner. $600 from traffic tickets, $65/hr on the court appointed, and charge decent fees for other services. Which is more than you'll make temping in NC!
3. Because of the sense of fulfillment you get from doing something more productive than clicking your life away.
4. Because you will no longer be subjected to someone else's terms and be treated like a child.
5. Because it isn't that expensive to start your own firm in NC. See my helpful websites/links on the right panel.
6. Because if you are willing to put in the work now and grow your firm eventually you will receive the benefits from your labor.
7. Because working on your own offers you freedom and flexibility.
8. Because you can not wait around and hope that the Associates at BIGLAW will notice how well you work and offer you a staff position.
9. Because there is a wonderful support system in North Carolina between solo practitioners which will make it not that hard for you to find a mentor.
10. Because if all else fails you have other options as an Attorney (you try your hand at teaching, writing, researching, work at a small to mid-size firm, ect) But this will only be possible after a few years of real practice and experience. Document review is not considered to be the "practice of law."

The top ten ways for lawyers to increase client satisfaction

The top ten ways for lawyers to increase client satisfaction

from Law.com

In the current economy, other lawyers will be coming after your clients. Every lawyer would therefore be well advised to increase client satisfaction and protect the relationships that ultimately pay your salary, bonus, and rent. You can’t make clients too happy.

Review these best practices from other law firms and select the tactics that best fit your practice.

For current clients:

1. Schedule a free visit to a client’s office, to discuss the client’s business needs.
2. Schedule free monthly meetings or telecons “off the clock.”
3. Conduct a formal or informal client satisfaction interview.
4. Ask the client what needs to be improved—responsiveness, timeliness, cost, and/or value—and brainstorm together about how to accomplish this.
5. Improve communication about the business implications of legal matters.
6. Increase transparency in budget estimates and billing.
7. Promote efficiencies to reduce cost, and tell clients about them.
8. Tell clients what they can do to help control or reduce legal costs.
9. Organize a client service team.
10. Improve your active listening skills.

For some litigators and others, referral sources are the most important source of new work, and should be treated as if they were clients.
For referral sources:
1. Update people promptly and regularly on the results of each and every client they’ve sent to you.
2. Ask yourself: What has helped build this relationship in the past? Do it again.
3. Ask yourself: What have I done for them lately? Do more.
4. Take them to lunch and ask: how could I help you?
5. Schedule a visit to the referrer’s office to discuss trends in their business, and how you can help.
6. List your top referral sources and give them special treatment—such as giving out your home phone number—and make sure they know that they are in a special category.
7. Do some web research on your source’s business and work the facts into your discussions to show that you are doing your homework.
8. Send a handwritten thank you note.
9. Establish a regular schedule for updates. Ask whether they would prefer ph

On legal fees, Hackney hears different drum

 posted by charlotte attorney
Dan Kane and Ryan Teague Beckwith, Staff WritersComment on this story When House Speaker Joe Hackney put the brakes on legislation that would have awarded legal fees to those who win public records battles against state and local governments, he went against the wishes of Democrats in a big chunk of his district.
The Chatham County Democratic Party's executive committee had passed a resolution last year advocating legislation that provides an automatic award of legal fees. This was after some of its members were involved in a public records lawsuit with the Chatham County Board of Elections.
The residents won against the board, but the judge in the case made the residents pay all but 10 percent of their $35,000 legal bill.
"The entire burden of making sure the public records law gets enforced lies upon the citizens, and that's not fair," said Nick Meyer, a member of the Chatham Democrats executive committee.
The committee passed another resolution Thursday urging legislation that would award costs to successful plaintiffs "so as to reduce the temptation to play games with the legal process wasting the court's time and citizens' resources."
The Senate unanimously passed the legislation on the first day of the session's final week, but Hackney, an Orange County Democrat, did not want it taken up in the House. He said there wasn't enough time, but he also confirmed that he does not like taking legal fee decisions out of the hands of judges.