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Lawyer Outsourcing Continues
Over at Blawg.com, Bill Gratch comments on this Law.com article, "GCs Embrace Outsourced Work." According to the article, more and more in-house lawyers are outsourcing and, more specifically, offshoring legal work, in large part because of substantial cost savings. And offshore legal service companies such as Pangea3 are growing rapidly through venture capital investments. Boston-based Forrester Research estimates the current value of legal work shipped overseas at $80 million, but predicts that $4 billion worth may head to India by 2015.
Scott Rickman, a GC quoted in the article, says that he's not overly concerned about risks of sending work overseas. He suggests that many law firms focus on the risks to preserve their own profits. But other corporate insiders in the article disagree. For example, Julie Mar-Spinola, a former VP at Atmel Corp. who headed up litigation and intellectual property, expressed concern about outsourcing patent work to lawyers halfway around the world who might not understand the business or technology.
With a recession on the horizon, offshoring will likely gain even more traction in 2008 as corporations look for new ways to save money. And even when boom times return, by then, offshoring may be so entrenched that corporations may not ever go back.
Posted by Carolyn Elefant on January 25, 2008 at 04:52 PM | Permalink
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