What is Legal Outsourcing?
Outsourcing involves distributing work traditionally handled within a company or law firm to an outside contractor for performance. While outsourcing of legal work within the U.S. has been practiced by companies and law firms for longer than a century, the recent trend in legal outsourcing comprehends sending work historically performed by law firms in the U.S. to other countries such as India.
To some, the term outsourcing conjures images of concern or fear. In reality, outsourcing in a legal sense amounts to nothing more than delegation of carefully selected tasks and assignment to qualified professional members of the law firm’s staff or team for completion. “Outsourcing” of legal work by senior partners to junior associates down the hall, temporary attorneys, “of counsel,” or even summer law clerks (students), is a practice as old as the legal profession itself.
Twenty-first century outsourcing, increasingly demanded by clients for cost savings, involves delegation, under supervision, of certain taskoriented “chore” work to lawyers across the globe. Forrester Research has forecast that the offshore market for legal services, at $80 million annually as of the end of 2006, will amount to $4 billion annually by 2015. Offshore legal outsourcing reflects a fundamental change in the legal profession and the delivery of service to law firm clients. While the legal profession historically has been slow to embrace new ideas, change often envelopes the profession. Earlier generations of lawyers resisted the typewriter and later the dictating machine in favor of shorthand, the computer in favor of the typewriter, TV and print legal advertising in favor of the country club. Resisting change does not fend it off. Rather, those who understand and manage the inevitability of changing trends impacting the legal profession are better able to maintain a competitive edge, increase profitability, and protect equity.