From India eNews:
Who will outsource more in 2010 - law firms or corporates?
"The US$146 m (in 2006) legal process outsourcing (LPO) industry in India is on a rapid growth path, and is expected to grow to $640 million by the end of 2010 according to ValueNotes’ estimates. Corporates and law firms are offshoring large volumes and more complex work and have started to take advantage of the labor arbitrage that has been exploited by other industries for well over a decade. Increasing workload and rising costs are forcing legal counsel and law firms to offshore to cost effective service providers.
The difference between legal and other industries is that corporate legal departments, and not law firms, were the early promoters of legal outsourcing. Outsourcing in the legal market has been client driven rather than industry driven. This fact is further validated by a recent survey conducted by ValueNotes to find the willingness of law firms and corporate legal departments to offshore legal services. The survey reveals that corporates will offshore more aggressively by 2010. "
1 comment:
E-discovery, Indian laws need to witness sea changes and conversions to adapt to the new age of electronic information.
Paper documents were considered as the best documentary evidence in Indian courts for centuries. Today, documents are rarely handwritten. Most documents are created using personal computers or E-mail programs. Professionals rely upon personal computers to maintain diaries and to create their written communications. Most computer users have become prolific writers because of the convenience that computers provide. More documentary evidence exists today than ever before and it exists in a variety of electronically stored formats. However, a majority of computer-created documents are never printed on paper. Many are exchanged over the Internet and are read on the computer screen. Thus, the legal document discovery process has drastically changed as it relates to computer created documents.
LAWYERS AND JUDGES are seeking production of the entire computer hard disk drives, floppy diskettes, zip disks and even cell phones and palm computer devices. These new forms of documentary evidence have broadened the potentials for legal discovery. Unfortunately, our legal system has not kept pace with computer technology and the new document discovery requirements and electronic data. Electronic documents and its discovery should change the way lawyers and the courts do business in India .
Under the current legal system an increasing quantity of information relevant to civil and criminal cases is stored electronically , rather than on traditional paper form. Despite this development, there has been no widespread study or debate as to whether the provisions of our Criminal procedure code, Civil procedure code and Evidence act adequately address the difficult issues that frequently arise when evidence is stored in electronic form.
We cannot assume that the same rules applicable to the discovery of traditional form of evidence can be applied to electronic data. I have great concern on this wrong assumption. We need to have simple but important changes in our existing laws to adapt to the new age of electronic information.
We need to change our current legal system which is complex and outdated. We need laws that promote technology based services. Our existing discipline of law need to witness sea changes and conversions with the help of technology. Litigation support products/technology should evolve rapidly over the next few years and become part of our legal system more vital than they are today. They should be designed to prepare lawyers, law firms and legal departments to try a case, which includes interviewing witnesses, discovery of documents, document review, and case preparation. Litigation support services should help lawyers to reduce their costs, increase efficiency, and improve the quality of their work product so that they can focus on the practice of law.
Vinod Kuriakose- vinodkuriakose@gmail.com
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