Finally, another attorney is speaking out about legal process outsourcing besides Elie Mystal and myself. Seth Rowland writes about it in Technolawyer’s TechnoFeature (NOTE: You will have to subscribe in order to read the full article). It’s a good read that is chock full of information.

Here is an excerpt:

Our legal system is being given a wake-up call. The pressure of the market is forcing the “profession” of law to recognize what Ed Poll calls “The Business of Law.” Law firms are under pressure to act like businesses. That means cutting costs and making charges more predictable. The sky has not fallen yet. We still is time to save the American legal industry. The same business process modeling used by LPO firms when combined with the appropriate technology can transform our law firms into sleek efficient, productive, innovative and highly profitable companies that serve as a model for the world to follow.

This is interesting. From Edward Adams of the ABA Journal:

Legal information giant Thomson Reuters – owner of the storied brand West Publishing – is about to get into the business of providing legal services, according to the company.

Thomson announced Thursday evening that it is acquiring Indian legal process outsourcing company Pangea3 in a deal the Business Standard of India valued at between $35 million and $40 million.

Pangea3 is one of the largest legal outsourcing firms in India, with more than 650 employees and annual revenue in excess of $25 million, according to the Business Standard. A number of venture capitalists have invested in the company, including Silicon Valley’s Sequoia Capital which invested $7 million in 2007…

• On the legal process outsourcing front, Integreon signs a record deal with CMS Cameron McKenna, and Pangea3 opens up an office in London.
• Wendy Akbar blogs about Wisconsin.
• What happens when you mix oil and water? How about a pile of lawsuits and e-discovery issues.
• The EDRM turns six.
• kCura officially loves iDiscover Global.
• Lastly, eigh Jones writes of a new federal program designed to make parties in the pre-trial phase be nice to one another during e-discovery.

Over at The LPO Observer, there ‘s a post about how LPOs are taking on attacks both from the United States and India. The blogger first addresses the Indian issue.

In India, a group calling itself “The Association of Indian Lawyers” filed a petition in the Chennai High Court against foreign law firms doing business in India, despite a ban against them. The petition mentions top US and UK law firms, but also includes Integreon, the largest and most credible LPO provider. The inclusion of LPO’s stems, according to the petitioners, from the LPO’s being illegal foreign law offices.

But the Observer notes the reason Indian lawyers are coming after LPOs, the want a cut of the deal.

It is to be noted that a number of top Indian law firms, most notably Kochhar & Co. and FoxMandal Little have tried to penetrate the LPO market, with little success.  This is mostly due to the passive mentality of Indian lawyers and the nature of practicing law in India which conflicts with the much more aggressive and dynamic US and UK legal systems. Clearly, the traditional Indian lawyers are feeling threatened by the new entrants, and want a “piece of the action”.

So what’s the American’s problem with Legal Process Outsourcing? I wil give you the details and why the LPO Observer thinks the Indian lawyer challenges will most certainly fail after the jump.

Here is what irks this blogger with the Americans.

Around the same time, in the US, both the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 and the ABA Section on International Law have requested inputs on the ethical aspects of both domestics and foreign outsourcing of legal work.

Really?  Isn’t this the same commission that Lisa Solomon is screaming about taking more input from solos or small firm attorneys. Or isn’ t this the same ABA that “endorsed” outsourcing a few years back?

Apparently other branches of the ABA are poking around at LPOs as well.

The ABA Section on International Law in turn held a meeting on April 17, 2010 titled Public Forum on Offshore Outsourcing of Legal Services in New York. The stated goal of the meeting is “information gatehring” [sic], but participants did put LPO representatives on the defensive.

But have no fear LPOers, after painstaking research, the Observer has mathimatically broke this down to a less than 1% possibility on any of this affecting you.

Our opinion is that the Indian front will get bogged down in the notoriously inert Indian legal system (0.8 prob ability), and will achieve little in the foreseeable future. The US action will unlikely produce any significant threats to the industry, but may introduce more specific guidelines around the ethics of Legal Outsourcing (.7 probability). Such guidelines could prove beneficial to the industry and to the globalization of the legal trade.

So the Indian lawyers are lazy and the Americans won’t ever take a major standon anything.  See nothing to worry about whatsoever.

Good commentary by the Posse List this morning regarding WilmerHale’s decision to open up an “in-sourcing” facility in Dayton, Ohio. The post was in response to an article on LAW360.com by Leigh Kamping-Carder.

Even with contract attorneys providing law firms the opportunity to cut their costs (and their clients’ costs) with respect to e-discovery, the expenditures can still be prohibitive, particularly in high-cost regions like D.C. and New York where the cost to maintain a document review is higher than elsewhere in the U.S. As we have reported in the past, besides the state-of-the-art technology driving costs down, the drive to cut costs has led corporations and law firms to seek other ways to cover their e-discovery work — without sending it overseas…