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Legal Outsourcing India – Los Angeles County Bar Association

Posted on May 15, 2011 by admin| 1 Comment

Whether attorney in a civil case who charges an every hour rate may contract with an out-of-state company to draft a brief provided the attorney is competent to review the work, remains ultimately responsible for the final work product filed with the court by the attorney on behalf of the client, the attorney does not charge an unconscionable fee, client confidences & secrets are protected, & there is no conflict of interest between the client & the contracting entity. The attorney can outsource certain legal work but it is necessary to tell the client of the nature & scope of the contract between attorney & out-of-state company if the brief provided is a significant development in the representation or if the work is a cost which must be disclosed to the client under California law. Any refund of charges by the out-of-state company to the attorney ought to be passed through to the client if the client was separately charged for the service.
AUTHORITIES CITED: Statutes: California Business & Professions Code Section 6068, California Business & Professions Code Section
Cases: Bushman v. State Bar, 11 Cal. 3d 558 (1974); Crawford v. State Bar,
Farnham v. State Bar, Jones v. State Bar, Simmons v. State Bar, California Rules of Professional Conduct:
FACTS: An attorney licensed to practice law in California has filed a notice of appeal in a civil case on the clients behalf. The attorney charges an every hour rate for the appellate services. Soon thereafter, the attorney receives a solicitation from a legal research & brief writing company to draft the appellant opening brief for a comparatively low every hour fee. The legal research & brief writing company is not located in California, & employs both lawyers (none of whom are licensed to practice law in California) & non lawyers. Company promises to deliver a ready-to-file brief, to be signed by the California attorney. Company also promises to refund all fees paid to Company for the brief if the appeal is unsuccessful.

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Legal Outsourcing and its growth in India

Posted on May 10, 2011 by admin| Leave a comment

This article analyze the emergence of LPO in India, as well as its future growth. The outsourcing originally denoted the practice of sending work to third party companies in the U.S., it  gradually expanded to include sending work abroad, a practice that eventuallyeclipsed domestic outsourcing. Offshore outsourcing is not a new phenomenon.  Companies have been referring work to foreign third parties for many years. In the 1990s, as organizations began to focus more on cost-saving measures, they started to outsource those functions necessary to run a company but not related specifically to the core business.
The service industry now known as “Business Process Outsourcing” (“BPO in a relatively short period of time, global outsourcing has become a multi-billion dollar industry. Since the turn of the 21st century, growth has snowballed, going from approximately $119 billion in 2000 to approximately $234 billion in 2005. By the end of 2008, revenues are projected to rise to around $310 billion. The United States is one of the biggest consumers of outsourcing services. Approximately 59% of the global trade in outsourced work originates in North America. The next closest consumer is the European Union, which consumes approximately 27% of the market. Love it or hateit, offshoring is here to stay, and the trend appears to be for more offshoring, not less.
Legal Process Offshoring (“LPO”) was developed as a KPO service set for the legal industry. LPO can be traced back as far as 1995, when the law firm Bickel and Brewer first opened a satellite office to processadministrative. The most modern incarnation of LPO dates back to 2001, when GE created a captive center in Gurgaon, India to absorb in-house legal work. The usefulness of captive LPO centers was initially limited because it was difficult to get workflow to and from the captive centers in a timely fashion. Over the last couple of years, technological advancements have enabled service providers to make LPO more responsive—and potentially more useful—to law firms in primary markets such as the United States and United Kingdom.

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Legal Outsourcing India Ethical issues

Posted on April 28, 2011 by admin| Leave a comment

There is a five major ethical/professional conduct issues raised by LPO that is (1) Unauthorized practice of law by non-lawyers; (2) conflicts of interest; (3) client confidentiality; (4) client disclosure and consent; and (5) billing issues related to outsourcing. The Model Rules of Professional Conduct, the Formal Opinions issued by the ABA Committee on related subjects, and the recent opinion on LPO issued by the NYC Bar.

As is discussed below, the American Bar Association (“ABA”) has addressed the issue of outsourcing in the context of domestic contract attorneys. The ABA recommendations on that subject provide the most useful available starting point for analyzing the ethical implications of LPO.

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