Because America stinks at lending money, India is the hottest place on earth to practice law, well American law at least

From The Economic Times:

"NEW DELHI: A slowdown in the US is giving a push to the Indian legal process outsourcing (LPO) sector. Indian LPO firms are reporting a rise of over 200% in revenues in the past 12 months as they see a dramatic rise in litigation, intellectual property infringement work and bankruptcy-related document drafting. The rise in new business from litigation is due to a crash in the stock markets post the subprime crisis, which led many stockholders to sue companies.

“We have seen a dramatic rise in business from the litigation and IP infringement verticals in the past three months as organisations look to make money form brand or IP infringements due to a slowdown in consumer spending in the US.

We have ramped up our headcount correspondingly by almost 50% and plan to scale up more in the coming months,” says Sanjay Kamlani, CEO of Mumbai-based Pangea3.

US companies are also looking to cut costs and offshore legal work to India as lawyers are one of the highest paid professions in the US. “A junior lawyer on the US east coast (where the major stock exchanges are located) makes about $1,65,000-$2,00,000 per year.

The same work can be done at one-tenth the cost in India. As companies look to cut costs we see a rise in our toplines,” says Matthew Banks, senior vice-president, Legal Services, Integreon.

Mumbai-based Integreon has about 420 associates in the LPO business and has seen an over 200% rise in revenues in the past 12 months."

So what country will be outsourced to next, once India becomes the most vibrant economy in the world

From Sepia Mutiny:

"Outsourcing to India is nearly limitless in potential, both boosters and opponents alike claim. As evidence, they point to the proliferation of services that are currently being performed in India. No longer limited to programmers and call centers, outsourcing has grown to encompass BPO, medical transcription, tax return preparation, and concierge services. The latest frontier is the legal profession

In the past three years, the legal outsourcing industry here has grown about 60 percent annually. According to a report by research firm ValueNotes, the industry will employ about 24,000 people and earn revenue of $640 million by 2010. Indian workers who once helped with legal transcription now offer services that include research, litigation support, document discovery and review, drafting of contracts and patent writing. The industry offers an attractive career path for many of the 300,000 Indians who enroll in law schools every year. [Link]"

Warren Buffett: After the USA's slow and painful death, I will buy America for 200 Trillion Dollars, which will be equal to about 31 euros

From Reuters:

"The United States is already in a recession and it will be longer as well as deeper than many people expect, U.S. investor Warren Buffett said in an interview published in German magazine Der Spiegel on Saturday.

He said the United States was "already in recession" and added: "Perhaps not in the sense that economists would define it" with two consecutive quarters of negative growth."

Outsourcing: Law licenses, we don't need no stinkin law licenses.

From Livemint.com:
"New Delhi: Bad times for some American companies is turning into good times for India’s legal offshoring industry.

For reasons largely economic and partly cultural, India’s legal process outsourcing, or LPO, services providers have seen a sizeable uptick in business since the US economy has faltered. In particular, firms that handle support functions, such as reviewing documents and researching witnesses for US litigation, have enjoyed the biggest increases amid mounting disputes over who knew what and when in the mortgage and related markets meltdown."

There is also a video as well on this when you click the link. As an aside, I did not get one response from either DC Bar President-elect candidate regarding their opinion regarding this matter. I will follow up.

The good news is we will all be unemployed together. Oh and if you want to comment about how doc review is not the practice of law, blah, blah, blah, go ahead. I made my position pretty clear.

Outsourcing: For $625 bucks Indian Publisher can tell you why you won't have a job in 2010

From Bharat Book:

"The India revenues from legal services offshoring are slated to grow from $146 million for the calendar year 2006 to reach $640 million by end 2010. The industry employed around 7,500 people in the legal offshoring space in India as of end 2006. The number of employees is expected to reach 32,000 by end 2010."

"According to Arun Jethmalani, CEO, "While most vendors start by offering lower value services and gradually move up the value chain by demonstrating domain skills and gaining client confidence, there are others who focus on specific high-end services or niches." Adds Neeraja Kandala, analyst and co-author of the report, "High volume services like Document review, eDiscovery, Legal publishing as well as niche areas in Intellectual Property and Contract services will drive future growth in legal services offshoring."
Based on our exhaustive primary research and analysis of this sector, It has identified a "List of frontrunners" which includes Evalueserve, Integreon, OfficeTiger, CPA Global, Mindcrest, Pangea3 and Quislex. We have also identified ''Emerging players'' that have potential to emerge as winners within their chosen niches. These include players like LawScribe, New Galexy, SDD Global Solutions, Tusker Group, Aptara, Lason and Quattro BPO.
The report: "Offshoring Legal Services to India: An Update" provides an in-depth information and analysis of the Indian vendor space along with vendor profiles of all major and upcoming players."

FCPA: Justice sends corrupt corporate employees to jail because they cannot send corporations

From Dan Levine of The Recorder:

"By entering a plea last week for his role in bribing a British defense official, Martin Self joined a growing line of individual defendants awaiting sentencing in one of the Justice Department's major jihads.

Self is one of seven defendants across the country who have pleaded guilty and await sentencing for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, according to data recently compiled by Shearman & Sterling. The last individual defendant to be sentenced was Steven Lynwood Head in California's Southern District last September; he got six months in prison. In Self's case, the government agreed to a guideline range that would put his prison sentence at eight months.

The government's FCPA unit began by targeting companies, and now has focused on individuals to obtain tougher penalties, said Shearman partner Patrick Robbins. He compared it to the way the DOJ's antitrust division handled price fixing.

"It raises the profile of the enforcement program, and it's the kind of thing that executives around the world read about, and react to," said Robbins, a former prosecutor in the Northern District. The Justice Department brought 10 actions against individuals last year, which is the same number it brought in 2005 and 2006 combined, Shearman found. "

Off Topic: This is why I did not mention my four Masters and PhD

No I do not have four Masters and a PhD. This is a tidbit I found somewhat interesting at a blog called Leaving the Law:

"So the question of whether to dumb down your resume came up on the Career Track chat on washingtonpost.com. Specifically, the question was whether to leave off advanced degrees.
Here’s the short version of the debate:

I was having trouble getting a job and so began leaving off my MA thinking that employers would think I’m too young to have one (I was 23). Long story short, after doing so I received 5 offers for interviews and got a job. Few months later I told my boss about that casually and he laughed and told me I never would have been hired if he knew because he would have thought I’d want too much money. Unfortunately our society punishes very educated individuals sometimes.

When you are transitioning as a lawyer to nearly any other career field, you’re going to have to tackle this beast: Employers fear that you’ll want too much money, simply because you have a JD. I definitely ran up against this. It is now easier to at least get some interviews, now that I am four jobs deep in publishing—I’ve been out of law practice so long, even the more clueless employers probably figure I can’t easily go back to practicing law.

Forbes.com list America Recession Proof Cities, but DC is not on there, because DC is not a city, it is a district.

From Joshua Zumbrun of Forbes.com:
"Nationally, home prices are falling, unemployment is on the rise and the economy is expected to grow slowly--or even contract--in the first half of the year.
But some cities are doing just fine.
Take Oklahoma City, Okla. With falling unemployment, one of the country's strongest housing markets, and solid growth in agriculture, energy and manufacturing, it looks best positioned among the nation's largest metropolitan areas to ride out the current crisis."

Why Document Review Matters

How cool! As I am checking the blog this morning, I happened to read someone mentioning in comments on my letter to the DC Bar President-Elect candidates that document review is not really the practice of law.

Reviewing documents is not the practice of law. Responding to a subpoena does not require lawyers. I like Gabe but he is starting with the incorrect premise that the review of documents is the practice of law. It is a different matter that the attorney on the case is ultimately responsible for the response. Futhermore, when a lay person is served with a request for documents, the lay person is not required to hire an attorney to respond to the request. So, it is false to imply that the document productions require attorneys to begin with. Attorneys are involved to begin with because the document production is part of a legal matter that they are working on but the client can handle the document production however it chooses...with or without attorneys.
May 12, 2008 5:51 PM

Frankly I am thrilled to just get a comment, whether or not that person agrees with me. Heck someone commented on my blog a while back and I was prepared to anoint her as the “Greatest Person on Earth.” That being said, I am glad Commenter 5:51 made mention of this, because it brings up the age old issue: Is document review part of the practice of law?

In regards to 5:51, I am thrilled with you commenting on my blog, and please continue to do so. That being said, I must strongly and respectfully disagree with you on the notion that e-discovery document reviews are not the practice of law. I can explain this on both a bird's eye view level and a more “nitty, gritty” detailed level as well.

First the bird’s eye view, e-discovery is exactly that--discovery, which is part of the practice of law. Now I have never asserted that you have to be an attorney to participate in the discovery process. It is clear that you do not have to be one.

What is clear is that the level of supervision for non attorneys in discovery (or any other part of the practice of law) is much stricter. Believe you me, the supervisory threshold goes far beyond the standard practice of the supervising staff attorney that counts up the number of documents reviewed each day, spot checks work here and there, and manages the progress of a particular project. After all, that is the basic standard we use for attorneys that ARE licensed in DC.

With non licensed attorneys, the supervision would be much greater. The level of quality control would be much higher than that required of DC barred attorneys, and that goes for both responsive and non-responsive documents. That is in exact adherence with the now infamous June 17, 2005 opinion from the Committee on the Unauthorized Practice of Law for the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia.

My argument was how in the world is any law firm going be able to meet that much higher standard? We are talking about hundreds of mostly non-American licensed attorneys, who don’t have an American legal education, who are reviewing millions and millions of documents in e-discovery. The truth is that it is almost impossible to meet that higher threshold.

Can the work be mind-numblingly boring at times? Of course, but here is a breaking news flash for you--90% of the law is pretty freaking boring. Think about it. How many of you got all hot and heavy arguing Res Judicata in moot court, or was there ever a part of the hearing about parol evidence rule where you "got the vapors?"

Second, on a micro more “nitty gritty” level, in discovery you are asked to make a judgment call as to responsive or non-responsiveness of a document (that is why it is lovingly called "document review"). This is again also part of the practice of law. Albeit I grant you it is a small part, but it's still a part. Now, are you writing a brief to the supreme court? No, but you are still are making a legal judgment call, and for that you need a license or the adequate supervision from someone who is licensed.

I agree with you again in the sense that attorneys are not required to make that call and there are many non attorneys who could make that call as to responsiveness with absolute competence and accuracy. But if you are going to use non attorneys as I stated above, you are held to a much higher threshold when it comes to supervision, which I do not believe can be met.
Finally, about this in your comment:

Futhermore (sic), when a lay person is served with a request for documents, the lay person is not required to hire an attorney to respond to the request.

That is the case with any aspect of law not just discovery. You can always argue a case pro se. Frankly, in this country, you are never required to hire an attorney. If a lay person was charged with murder, he or she could absolutely defend themselves in court without an attorney. If my wife wanted to divorce me, I could argue my own case in court regardless if I had a law license or not. As an aside, I would definitely hire one though because my wife would take me to the cleaners.

What I cannot do is hire my neighbor down the street who is a plumber to represent me in court, because he does not have a license to practice law. That being said, could my neighbor the plumber, who is exceptionally smart by the way, handle discovery in my case all by himself? Of course not, although he is exceptionally smart, he would still need an attorney with a license to look over his work.

That is exactly what is happening here. For as much ethics and professional repsonsibilty our state and national bar organizations preach, they are at the same time condoning corporations and other law firms in hiring a bunch of non licensed foreign attorneys and letting them practice American law without the proper and necessary supervision that is required. In essence we are giving a license, so to speak, for hundreds if not thousands of non U.S. licensed attorneys to practice law without one.

Indian publication on Outsourcing clearly running out of material fast

Wow I wasn't expecting this from my earlier post:

Subject: Your opinion in Publication
From:"PANKAJ PARNAMI" (Add as Preferred Sender)
Date: Tue, May 13, 2008 9:53 am
To:gabe@gabesguide.com

Dear Gabe,

We are the Consultants to Legal Process Outsourcing
Industry in India.

We run a publication - LPO Watch, India's first and only magazine (online) over LPO industry. It goes to 30,000 people in six business markets including India and United States.

We want to publish your Opinion - My Open Letter Concerning LPO, in the next edition of LPO Watch (sample attached) - without any compensation. We seek permission for that. It would be launched around 25th of May.

We look forward hearing you with positive reply. --
With my kindest regards,Pankaj Parnami+91 - 98107 37210KPO CONSULTANTSCONSULTANTS TO LPO INDUSTRY

No word yet from either candidate, but it is still early people. They have jobs of their own remember.

Outsourcing: Robert Denney is an honest man

Philly.com conducted an interview with Robert Denney a legal consultant, which is a must read for any contract attorney out there. Much of the interview focused on legal outsourcing. HEre are the highlights:

Q: How much will outsourcing of legal work to India and other offshore sites
affect the industry?

A: That has been a very strong trend in the last few years. India became a center, and now there are other areas. It used to be just research work, but now it is document drafting, particularly for large firms, that need to drive costs down.

Q: Why are they doing this?

A: They are trying to boost their per-partner profit numbers and to
make their clients happy.
It is a combination of both. Clients are really complaining more about their rates, the hourly billing rates. But it is also another way to try and maintain profits.

Q: How reliable is a legal document drafted in Mumbai for use in the United States?

A: Many of these people are graduates of law schools, and the quality of their work is reviewed by lawyers in the United States. Whether they are drafting documents for a federal case, or for use in Pennsylvania, the law firms that
outsource this work make sure that they are well-grounded in the laws of those
venues. The quality control is done back here in Philadelphia.

Q: Do the clients know?

A: Many of them do not. Even those that do, many of them, such as corporate legal departments, also are outsourcing their work. It is the same issue for them, trying to keep costs down.

The ABA Journal comments on the Post Article about Outsourcing that everyone else is commenting on including us.

There has been more followup from the Post article on outsourcing. I noted two other blogs that commented on it here and here.

From Debra Cassens Weiss of the ABA Journal.

"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."

Lazy Sunday Links: We laugh in the face of the Subprime Crisis.

• In order to make America understand the suprime crisis, economists have now starting explaining the crisis in humorous cartoons, otherwise we would never understand.

• Speaking of wacky subprime humor, below is a video from Australia explaining the impact of the American subprime crisis has had on their country. Austrailia is an island country founded by the British, who liked it because they were also an island country themselves.
  
  
  
• HSBC does not find the subprime crisis so funny

• And Gangster Government and The Faculty Lounge touch on the outsourcing news article I mentioned yesterday.

How is that "New Aftermath" smell Treating ya Jerry?

Jerry Yang, Yahoo founder, and Gao Qin Sheng, mother of one of the journalists imprisoned as a result of Yahoo's actions in China. You can read more about that here.

The aftermath from the AP:

"Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Jerry Yang has gotten what he wanted: a chance to prove his company is worth more than the $47.5 billion that Microsoft Corp. offered to buy the Internet pioneer.

It will be a daunting challenge, as Yang will be pointedly reminded Monday when investors are expected to show how little they think of Yahoo without a takeover bid on the table. Faced with resistance from Yang and the rest of Yahoo's board, Microsoft withdrew its offer over the weekend."

Lazy Sunday Links, Yahoo lets down America, themselves

Good job Yahoo. I am sure your stock will soar now that you just walked away from a $44 Billion dollar check.

Now United not sure if it wants to take the plunge with US Airways, or go back to an old fling in Continental.

Warren Buffett is not panicked about the market, but then again he is the richest man in the world. So he says the rest of us should be.

Iron Mountain has hired John Cleese to dole out all of their legal advice. Now John Cleese is not a lawyer, but he is a comedian, which is more important.

This is actually one of the better blogs I have seen on e-discovery. I am kind of stunned I haven’t seen it before.

There are at least 3 Floridians who care about e-discovery.
This blog actually provides a nice background to the FCPA. No sarcasm there, it really is a good background. Of course, their entry was from another source.

Buzz Kill of the Day: Buffett says Nation in for Long Recession, Eternal Doom

Ugh:

"Warren Buffett, the world's richest person, said on Monday the U.S. economy is in a recession that will be more severe than most people expect."

Funny he would say that on the day he announced his intention to acquire Wrigley's.