As an assistant attorney general for New York State, Christopher Wheeler used to spend most of the time arguing in courtrooms in New York City. He works in a sprawling unfinished planned suburb of New Delhi where office buildings are sprouting from empty lots and dirts roads are fringed with fresh juice stalls and construction rubble. A legal outsourcing firm, Mr. Wheeler managers a team of 110 Indian lawyers who do the grunt work traditionally assigned to young lawyers in the United States at a fraction of the cost.
In recent years, India’s legal outsourcing industry has grown from an experimental endeavor to a small but mainstream part of the global business of law. In India for the review, due diligence, contract management and more, India’s legal outsourcing industry has grown in recent years from an experimental endeavor to a small but mainstream part of the global business of law, the cash-conscious wall street banks, mining giants, insurance firms and industrial conglomerates are hiring lawyers.
To win new clients and take on more sophisticated work, legal outsourcing firms in India are actively recruiting experienced lawyers from the West. The American and British lawyers who might once have turned up their noses at the idea of moving to India or harbored an outright hostility to outsourcing legal work in principle are re evaluating the sector. The number of legal outsourcing companies in India has mushroomed to more than 140 at the end of 2009 from 40 in 2005. A consulting firm is expected to grow to $440 million up 38 percent from 2008 and should surpass $1 billion by 2014.
This is not a blip , this is a big historical movement. There is an increasing pressure by clients to reduce costs and increase efficiency and with companies already familiar with the outsourcing tasks like information technology work to India, legal services a natural next steps. The number of Western lawyers moving to outsourcing companies could be called more of a trickle than a flood. As more business flows out of traditional law firms and into India. The compensation for the top managers at legal outsourcing firms is competitive with the salaries at midsize law firms outside of major metropolitan areas of the United States. Living costs are much lower in India and often there is the added allure of stock in the outsourcing company. The outsourcing remains a highly contentious issue in the west particularly as law firms have been trimming their staffs and curtailing hiring plans. The western lawyers who have joined outsourcing firms are unapologetic about the shift to India.
Many legal outsourcing firms have officers around the world to interact with clients but keep the majority of the employees in India some also have a stable of lawyers in the Philippines. Employees at a legal outsourcing companies in India are not allowed by Indian law to give legal advice to clients in the West, no matter their qualifications. The legal outsourcing companies perform a lot of the functions that a junior lawyer might do in a American law firm.
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