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Recruiting Lawyers for Document Review ... in India

Here, in the United States, document review or "contract lawyer" jobs aren't viewed with much prestige, nor are they typically recommended as the optimal start to a successful legal career. So I was amused to read this article, Legal eagles for digital age, by Sanjay Kamlani, founder of an India-based legal process outsourcing (LPO) company (Hindustan Times, 8/1/07).

Kamlani writes:

When you work for an Indian law firm servicing some of the largest global multinationals, you certainly get the best exposure that you could possibly ask for in terms of the client base. However, in most cases, the transactions you are seeing from those clients are likely limited to India-centric transactions — setting up a subsidiary in India, availing tax holidays in India, and such. The scope of these transactions for Fortune 500 multinationals is not nearly as broad as the scope of transactions that are occurring globally.

Compare this with the work done at an LPO, where the virtual office environment created by the Internet enables the work done at an LPO to be truly global in scope. At high-end LPOs, lawyers are servicing multinational in-house lawyers and law firms on their global practice. Large multinationals, whether it be a GE, Microsoft, Boeing, Google, or a Goldman Sachs, are typically not approaching Indian law firms for activities that are not India-centric.  The exposure at an LPO also varies across industries. You could be reviewing a services agreement on a given day and a financial indenture on another. Thus, if one wants to move from an LPO to an Indian or an international law firm, the transition is easy due to the exposure gained.

I suppose that's one way of looking at the benefits of contract lawyering projects. I wonder whether these same arguments would play to U.S. lawyers in the U.S. 

Posted by Carolyn Elefant on August 2, 2007 at 03:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Comments

The reason for booming of LPOs in India is mainly becuase of economics. The fee charged by an Indian Lawyer is very low when compared to the Western countries and hence a 10 % of the fee sharged by a US lawyer is a luxury in India

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