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THE MODERN BACKROOM OFFICE

Legal Process Outsourcings Inevitable Effect on the North American Practice of Law

Nav S. Virk

I. Introduction. 1

II. Understanding Legal Process Outsourcing. 3

III. Empirical Analysis.. 5

IV. Political Considerations for Legal and Business Innovation.. 8

V. Sustainable Competitive Advantage: Future Prospects for LPO 11

VI. Risk Mitigation: Factoring Technical Errors in LPO. 13

VII. Risk Mitigation: Factoring Human Errors in LPO. 14

VIII. Passing the Buck or Keeping It: Ethical Considerations 15

IX. Conclusion.. 16

I. I N T R O D U C T I O N

The errand-boy is generally, as was Simonnin, a boy of thirteen to fourteen years old, who in

every law firm is under the dominion of the chief clerk whose odd little jobs and love letters keep

him busy even when he is taking writs to bailiffs and requests for a hearing to the lawcourts. In

his way of life he resembles a streetwise Parisian lad, and in his destiny he belongs to the tribe of

pettifogging lawyers.

Honore de Balzac, Colonel Chabert

The future, if not present, legal errand person for North American law firms

pettifogging or prestigious - will likely be a fully trained common law lawyer operating

from a barren office in a country that no member of the firm has actually had the

opportunity to visit. The city the errand person works from will likely require due care in

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pronunciation: it is much harder to say Trivandrum eloquently than Toronto. Global

business process outsourcing, or legal process outsourcing in the specific case of legal

services, is in its initial stages of development. Yet the momentum and results being

experienced in the legal marketplace from the pioneering efforts of legal process

outsourcing are remarkable: it is now possible through virtual satellite offices set-up in

foreign jurisdictions such as India, for North American law firms to operate twenty-four

hours a day, at a high level of efficiency, at an overhead rate from the extra work being

similar to the expenses carried by law firms employing real-life Simonnins at the time of

Balzacs writings. More simply: legal outsourcing will have the inevitable effect of

dramatically changing the North American practice of law.

The question that must be addressed in regards to legal outsourcing is not whether

contemporary law firms will optimize the ability to outsource business processes this is

already occurring, and increasingly gaining momentum as technology and outsourcing

firms become more competent, efficient, and affordable - but when they will be engaging

in outsourcing, and to what extent. The legal guild, zealously protectionist, must confront

business realities: what are the best methods to utilize legal process outsourcing to

enhance the profession? Ethically, should lawyers be reaping the costs-savings benefits of

outsourced services, or should those considerable savings be passed to clients, who may

be oblivious as to where their file was dealt with? Additionally, will competitive

advantage/arbitrage exist in the realm of outsourcing as developing states mature? How

will, or how can countries respond to transcending application of domestic laws,

particularly employment legislation intended to regulate the legal profession? These

issues among others will be discussed within this case study.

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Ultimately, the business reality of legal process outsourcing, particularly the

considerable cost-savings that can be achieved by law firms outsourcing their backend

work, guides resolutions to other outstanding issues. The business advantage presented

by well-developed legal process outsourcing models will result in a considerable shift to

the existing legal environment: the efficiency of legal work performed will be greatly

enhanced, as will the quality of services rendered, allowing for greater profit

maximization for private lawyers, while reducing costs for those needing legal services.

II. UNDERSTANDING LEGAL PROCESS OUTSOURCING

Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast.

Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

A business process is any activity undertaken to achieve an objective of business

operations. In the operation of a lemonade stand for example, the squeezing of lemonades

is a business process. For law firms, several business processes are everyday activities:

research, document review, document preparation, accounting, photocopying, et cetera.

Legal process outsourcing involves individuals not in the employ of a law firm or an

organization heavily employing lawyers, such as governments, carrying out the activities

of the firm or organization independently. Outsourcing is primarily done under the belief

that it maximizes the utility of the organization that is outsourcing its processes:

contractors will be able to achieve the process being outsourced more efficiently, thus

saving the organization time, which equates into cost-savings and profit maximization.

Costs are further reduced when a contractor can be paid for their services at a rate

well below that of an ordinary employee. This is now possible through globalization. A

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newly minted lawyer in Boston for example, may command the year salary of a seasoned

attorney in Beirut for a weeks worth of equivalent work.

Law firms have been outsourcing their business processes since the inception of

the industry. Classic literature and historical legal texts often reference court runners,

transcribers, legal clerks shared among several law offices, and various other uses of

contractors to maximize the profits of the law firm. Contemporary legal practice

periodicals discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using outside human resources

firms to hire staff; specialized technology and consulting firms available to lawyers, and

many other ways a legal practice may flourish through outsourcing some of its practices.

There is little discussion surrounding the reaches of global legal process outsourcing or

the practical limits of what can be outsourced.

Business process outsourcing in the modern, global sense involves the

outsourcing of businesses processes to contractors in another country. Ordinarily this

would be seen as impossible in the legal field, as lawyers are required to be licensed in

the jurisdiction in which they practice. But it is not the physical process of practicing law

that is being outsourced: while a lawyer is still required to be licensed by the province of

Alberta to appear in an Edmonton courtroom, there is nothing theoretically that prevents

an Alberta lawyer from having his pleadings prepared by junior counsel working from a

satellite office in Bogot. The accountant that oversees the daily records of the lawyers

firm may be working comfortably from home in Munich, and much of the document

review involved in the file being contested may have been reviewed by law students

working part-time in their Indian dormitories.

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Theory is being put into practice. As early as the late 1990s private lawyers

recognized the considerable opportunity in global outsourcing. With the progression of

time, the complexity, variance and quantity of work being outsourced has been rapidly

increasing. An observance of the empirical growth trend of legal process outsourcing

requires an inference that it is not a novel phenomena; LPO presents a viable way for

private law firms to increase their bottom lines, by reducing costs, and allowing for

greater efficiency in the provision of legal services.

III. EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

Though there is a lack of empirical information in regards to the depths that legal

process outsourcing could reach, nearly all commentary to date on the subject matter

suggests that legal process outsourcing will greatly effect the way the business law is

conducted. This being said, it must be kept in mind that legal process outsourcing in a

global sense is a relatively new concept. While statistically it is not yet possible to

extensively gauge the impact of legal process outsourcing, the tide of its progress

continues to build at a considerable rate.

Academic literature provides two compelling articles demonstrating the ability of

governments to achieve considerable cost-savings if outsourcing were to become

widespread. Patrick McFadden provides arguments for the United States government to

consider outsourcing legal solutions in the same vane it approached numerous other

public sectors such as the personal staff employed within prisons, wherein privatization

benefited the government not only through cost-savings, but greater efficiency.

Similar to McFaddens arguments, Professor Shapiro provides critical

observations on government regulation and the purchase of legal services occurring with

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an economical make-or-buy approach. The government, through due planning and care,

will be able to save considerably if it chooses to buy legal services rather than make

them through the creation of additional public legal departments. Aside from these two

articles, contemporary press and an examination of the software programming and other

industries that have used business process outsourcing for longer periods provide

guidance as to the startling reaches legal process outsourcing will have.

A 2004 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers concluded that offshoring is "about to

dramatically take off" in Canada. This report affirms surveys that assess the willingness

of Canadian organizations and business to consider outsourcing as a viable labour

management solution. Many businesses, such as the legal industry, are following the

trends set by the software programming and telecommunications industries that have

rapidly expanded in using global service-based outsourcing.

Previous Outsourcing Models

It is hard to ignore the fact that many calls to customer service centres of North

American corporations are answered by call centre representatives in countries on other

continents. There is no firm estimate on the number of call centres that have originated

outside of North America, but the boom in telecommunications industry in India and the

Asian region are well documented. Similarly, backend software programming for Silicon

Valley technology companies, including start-ups, is often not occurring in California -

information technology companies now routinely look to outside markets before

considering North American employee hiring for junior programming.

Though the effects of these trends are dramatic thousands of North American

jobs are being vaporized and replaced in foreign markets they are not entirely

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unexpected. One of Canadas leading pollsters, Angus Reid, predicted the steady rise of

technology and service-based outsourcing would lead to a dramatic realignment of the

Canadian economy nearly a decade ago. The cost savings of outsourcing, as Reid

theorized, are immense and it is only logical that they would be utilized by businesses

intending to maximize their profit margins.

Results of Existing Legal Outsourcing Projects

Existing press coverage of legal process outsourcing rarely provides economic

data on the effects of the LPO process. A recent news article by CNN Money estimated

that nearly $(US)15 Billion of legal work would be outsourced from the United States by

2015. Although the article did not provide the financial calculations CNN used to project

this amount, it is fair to conclude that the LPO market is quite large. This is evident from

other media reports and press releases circulating on business wires.

Nearly everyday a news story emerges indicating the success of a legal

outsourcing venture. Several companies have issued press releases on their rapid

successes in the LPO market, but often these reports must be viewed with a critical eye as

it is in the best interests of individuals involved in the LPO market to emphasize the

growing trend of their practice. But it is difficult to ignore the rise of LPO movement

when the worlds sixth largest corporation engages in the practice and intends to expand

its outsourced staff.

General Electric hired thirty Indian lawyers in 2004 to assist its legal practice

group deal with American legal issues. The team of Indian counsel is being supervised by

American attorneys on-site. GE has further indicated that based on early results of their

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outsourced staff, there will be further expansion in the near future. Although GE has been

public about its outsourcing moves, it is quite probable that other corporations have also

engaged in globalized legal process outsourcing, but have not as forthcoming as GE due

to the current negative connotation that outsourcing derives in the public eye.

IV. POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR LEGAL AND BUSINESS INNOVATION

As the 2004 U.S. election demonstrated, outsourcing is a hot topic of political

debate. The threat of losing ones livelihood to foreigners is a scary proposition for

ordinary citizens. Analytically, bodies of evidence suggest that outsourcing actually

improves the vitality of state economies and eventually the quality of life for all residents.

This seems contradictory: the loss of jobs should decrease the vibrancy of a state, as there

are less people employed and therefore less disposable income available for material

goods. Yet continually, this is not what is found to occur. Rather more innovative

occupations emerge in an evolving economy wherein knowledge is expanded and

inefficiency is eliminated; individuals with more incentive and expertise to complete a

task do so, at a lower cost in another country.

Several scholars argue that the sooner American and Canadian politicians

embrace the fact that global outsourcing is not a passing fad, the more responsible the

actions governments can take to position each state to economically thrive in a

increasingly globalized world. As the results of global outsourcing become more evident,

it is interesting to note that earlier economic criticisms of the outsourcing process that

developing countries would not reap the economic benefit of corporations from the

developed world using labor at more attractive rates have gradually dissipated with the

rise of middle classes in states such as China and India. As poignantly noted by some

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critics, while developing countries have become more focused on business innovation,

traditionally innovative North Americans seems to be slipping: they'll sell us semi-

conductors and we'll sell them poetry". The criticism of the outsourcing process has

increasingly become cultural, but it is an absolute certainty that politics of various

degrees impacts the future evolution and success of legal process outsourcing.

Politics effects legal process outsourcing in numerous ways. Most prominently,

American and Canadian lawyers try to safeguard their existing practicing ability with

zealous force. It is state or provincial legislation that directs the requirements for lawyers

to practice within a jurisdiction. Competency testing is administrated by self-governing

legal organizations, typically bar associations or provincial legal societies, to affirm the

public trust that a lawyer practicing within a state or province is capable of being a legal

professional. This political action is the first and most powerful of many to safeguard the

entry of outsiders into the legal business. It should also be the most assuring for current

practioners.

Outsourced bogeymen in foreign jurisdictions cannot take away American and

Canadian legal positions except those that are currently inefficient for the bottom lines

of sophisticated and modern practices. Contractors however can, greatly supplement the

efficiency of most legal practices therefore bettering the profit margin of private practice.

As a basic example of this, an individual operating a boutique practice may currently rely

on part-time law students to provide legal research and document review for her files. It

is in the best financial interests of the lawyer to have a competent legal student complete

tasks for her at the lowest possible price. Globalized legal process outsourcing is thus

favorable for her because it increases the pool of contractors she may pick from she

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does not have to hire a local student when one in a jurisdiction several thousand

kilometers away can complete the work as favorably as the local student, except at a

much reduced rate. Her overhead has decreased, while her profit margins have increased.

V. SUSTAINABLE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE: FUTURE PROSPECTS FOR LPO

Legal process outsourcing is most advantageous when the cost-savings for those

engaging in the process are the greatest. Continuing with the example of the lawyer with

a boutique practice from above, the lawyer has no incentive to outsource her backend

work to a part-time student in another jurisdiction if that student is costing as much or

more than the local student. Currently, emerging common law legal markets can provide

competent individuals capable of completing legal work at tremendous cost-savings for

North American employers. As states such as India mature, will this simple application of

arbitrage continue?

The simple answer is yes. However as demonstrated by the outsourced

telecommunications industry in India, often work will have to shift from region to region

to allow the greatest advantage for North American employers. Call centres in India were

traditionally concentrated in New Delhi, but as the industry boomed and experienced

workers commanded higher rates, several other regions began to compete with the city to

attract foreign investment. Over the long term, the supply of competent workers in

developing states including India, China, Malaysia, Singapore and Pakistan far exceeds

the qualified demands of American and Canadian companies looking to outsource.

VI. RISK MITIGATION: FACTORING TECHNICAL ERRORS IN LEGAL PROCESS

OUTSOURCING

Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.

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George Orwell, Charles Dickens

To date, there have been no reported technical errors in legal work that has been

outsourced. This likely a result of coverage of the development of legal process

outsourcing being sparse, rather than the perfection of the technical processes involved in

transferring large bodies of information instantly over transatlantic oceans. Using the

examples of other industries that have been in the global outsourcing pool for a greater

period of time, it is worth considering potential problems that will emerge in legal

outsourcing, and possible strategies to mitigate these risks.

Communications, Power, and Data Failure

In an increasingly evolving world, it is difficult to imagine life without the ability

to instantly communicate through phones, faxes, e-mails, and instant messaging devices.

In legal process outsourcing, these tools are essential for even the most basic project. It

should come as no surprise that in states that are still developing, some of these facilities

may not function with the efficiency of their North American counterparts. Almost as

startling however, is the rapid rate at which outsourcing hubs match or exceed the

capabilities of American or Canadian complements.

For example, broadband internet access is more affordable in parts of Southern

India than nearly all regions of North America. Dedicated networks were established

during the technology boom of the 1990s. While the chances of communication failure in

such developed regions are nearly equivalent to those expected in North American

business environments, any well-developed legal or business process outsourcing model

will require a plan for the possibility of communications failure. A risk mitigation

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strategy may include the automation of data transfer processes so that vital information is

more frequently available between satellite offices.

Like communications, because much of the outsourcing process involves a

reliance on technology, there is an inherent risk presented by power and/or data failure.

The good news for the future vitality of the LPO process is that state governments have

implemented measures to protect specially designated zones intended to draw

outsourcing companies. It is quite common for example, for outsourcing campuses to

have electrical generators operating at the same time as conventional power sources, to

limit the chances of a power failure interrupting business.

Protection of Intellectual Property

India and China are both signatories to the Paris Convention for the Protection of

Industrial Property, and India has recently implemented legislation intended to further

enhance the protection of intellectual property specifically to further its role as one of

the worlds foremost destinations for business process outsourcing. Like the conventional

protection of IP, private lawyers must pay special attention to how they protect their

assets along with those of their clients, regardless of where they practice.

VII. RISK MITIGATION: FACTORING HUMAN ERROR IN THE LPO PROCESS

Malicious or Incompetent Errors in Judgment

It is quite probable that the largest legal settlement in United States history would

not have been possible, if not for the deliberate breach of error committed by an out-of-

firm paralegal that was hired by a law firm representing tobacco manufacturer Brown and

Williamson in the late 1990s. The contracted paralegal, Merrell Williams, was hired to

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perform backroom sorting duties on behalf of the firm for B&W at the rate of $9/hour.

Williams stole thousands of pages of B&W documentation containing sensitive

information that provided evidence that cigarettes were essentially nicotine delivery

devices. This was information B&W never anticipated to end up in the public sphere,

and certainly not in the hands of several state attorney generals and powerful courtroom

litigators who would use the leaked and illegally attained internal documents to force the

tobacco industry to settle billions of dollars in state-by-state and class-action litigation.

Merrell Williams actions are a striking example of potential pitfalls in legal

process outsourcing: the possibility of human errors, deliberate or otherwise, resulting in

irreparable damage to lawyers and more grievously their clients. The law firm

representing Brown and Williamson required Williams to sign an extensive confidentially

agreement, which was of little consideration in the eyes of the court as the stolen

documents would be accepted as evidence in trial after trial. The Williams example

though spectacular for the amount of damage an errant contractor caused to an entire

industry, should not be dismissed as being isolated. Human error is a factor in business-

to-business interactions. There are several strategies that can be used by lawyers

interested in outsourcing their work to mitigate against the risk of human error resulting

in damage to their clients businesses.

Chief among any strategy is responsibly delegating any outsourced processes. In

the Williams example, the law firm representing Brown and Williamson would have been

well served to have had internal staff sort through sensitive information while outsourced

clerks processed information that would cause only minimal damage if it were to fall

within the hands of a third-party. Of course the circumstances of a project could be

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directed by time restraints, and numerous other factors, which may make it prudent to

implement a system of checks and balances.

A simple strategy to circumvent human errors in legal process outsourcing is a

regimented system to detect errors early in the process so they may be corrected before

they cause harm. This may be as simple as appointing staff that serve in a supervisory

capacity and review all processes that have been outsourced by the firm/organization.

State Corruption

As Elizabeth Economy discusses, using contemporary China as her model,

Western businesses must confront the reality that state corruption still exists at

heightened levels relative to North American environments in certain foreign regions.

The corruption Economy refers to is not deliberate sabotaging of an outsourcing project,

but rather the inherent cost of doing business that must be built into an well-planned

outsourcing model.

VIII. PASSING THE BUCK OR KEEPING IT - ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR LPO

There are considerable cost-savings in legal process outsourcing. Paying for legal

services is often done on an hourly basis, with attorneys billing clients per hour for

services performed. Attorney rates are usually set by the complexity of the matter being

addressed, the expertise and experience of the lawyer, and often the competitive rate

charged by other lawyers within the jurisdiction for similar work. Often backend work

will be performed by newly graduated lawyers or articling students, if not paralegals and

legal assistants. It is common practice to provide clients with a legal bill that allocates the

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breakdown of services rendered by the firm according to the hours devoted by each

lawyer.

While a newly called Canadian lawyer will generally bill at a rate exceeding

$(Cdn)110/hour, more seasoned Indian lawyers working with outsourcing firms will

typically charge $(Cdn)10-25/hour for equivalent work. The cost-savings for using a

contracted lawyer for back-end work become readily evident. The question that lawyers

must confront is whether the cost-savings achieved by employing a contracted lawyer

should be kept by the firm or passed through to the client.

The Law Society of Alberta provides no guidance to this question. Several

publications intended in to clarify value guidelines for counsel make note of provisioning

legal services at reasonable rates. There is no direction given on how an Alberta law

firm should be billing the work performed by it by a contracted lawyer.

An easy solution to this dilemma would be to bill a client at the mid-point of what

a contracted lawyer commanded in wages and what a client would have likely have paid

to a junior associate for equivalent work. This solution may seem like the most ethical

way to address the billing concern, but it is not in the best interest of any law firm or the

legal industry in general to proceed in this manner.

As the software industry, which eagerly adopts business process outsourcing

solutions, has demonstrated countless times: decreasing prices for customers occurs only

after profit maximization has been optimally achieved. For lawyers in private practice,

the eventual goal should be to gradually decrease the billing rates for ordinary individuals

using legal services, but this should only occur after the highest level of profit

maximization has been derived from using the powerful tool of legal process outsourcing.

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A client should be made aware that his/her file is being handled by outside contractors,

but the cost of that contractor to the firm does not need to be revealed to the client and the

difference in quality of work delivered should make the client satisfied, regardless of

whether it was a veteran Pakistani lawyer that prepared the legal research or a newly

minted law graduate from Pennsylvania or Ponoka, Alberta.

IX. CONCLUSION

The business reality of legal process outsourcing, particularly the considerable

cost-savings that can be achieved by law firms outsourcing their backend work, makes its

evolution and adoption in the North American practice of law inevitable. The business

advantage presented by well-developed legal process outsourcing models that consider

proper risk mitigation techniques will result in a considerable shift to the existing legal

environment: the efficiency of legal work performed will be greatly enhanced, as will the

quality of services rendered, allowing for greater profit maximization for law firms and a

reduction of costs for governments and private individuals using legal services.

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Comprehensive Bibliography of Works Cited and Consulted

[Sources that have no corresponding date on which they were retrieved were copied into

a Microsoft Word document that inaccurately recorded the date stamp (as September

2004 rather than correct dates in May/June 2005). Material/document available if

necessary.]

Balzac, Honore de. Colonel Chabert. Trns. Andrew Brown. London: Hesperus Press, 2003.

Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, Ed. Consolidated Intellectual Property Statutes and

Regulations, 2004. Toronto: Thomson Canada Limited, 2003.

Brown, James (2005, July 20). Outsourcing creating more jobs for the UK. Vuenet News. Retrieved July 23, 2005 from www. http://www.vnunet.com/computing.

Business Briefs (2005, July 23). Outsourcing aids Wipro profit. Calgary Herald, p. F9.

Crawford, Krysten. (2004, October 10). Outsourcing the lawyers. CNN/Money.

Retrieved online:

Dickens, Charles. Martin Chuzzlewit. [online: http://www.online-literature.com/

dickens/chuzzlewit/19/]. Retrieved July 2, 2005.

Drezner, Daniel W. The Outsourcing Bogeyman [Electronic]. 83 Foreign Affairs No. 23, pp. 22-34. (May/June 2004).

Economy, Elizabeth. Dont Break the Engagement [Electronic]. 83 Foreign Affairs No. 23, pp. 96-110. (May/June 2004).

Enders, Albrecht and Jelassi, Tawfik. Strategies for e-Business: Creating Value through

Electronic and Mobile Commerce. Toronto: Prentice Hall, 2005.

Friedman, Matthew and Blanshay, Marlene. Understanding B2B. Chicago: Dearborn

Trade, 2001.

Goldfarb, Danielle. How Canada wins from global services outsourcing.

Toronto : C.D. Howe Institute, November 2004.

Gray, Ken (2003, July 11). Outside help from lawyers costs city $2.5M: $238,000 spent

on smoking bylaw. The Ottawa Citizen. Retrieved June 24-25, 2005 from the

Canadian Newsstand Database.

Gray, Ken. (2004, February 6). City could save by hiring more lawyers. The Ottawa

Citizen. Retrieved June 24-25, 2005 from the Canadian Newsstand Database.

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Guardian Business (2005, June 14). Outsourcing over there is here to stay. The Guardian.

Retrieved June 15, 2005 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/business.

Harmon, Paul. Business Process Change: A Managers Guide to Improving, Redesigning, and Automating Processes. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2003.

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Online. Retrieved online: .

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New York : Springer, 2004.

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Levy, Adam et. al.. The People v. Big Tobacco: How the States took on the Tobacco

Giants. New York: Bloomberg, L.P., 1998.

Marron, Kevin. Legal recruitment and outsourcing. 28 Canadian Lawyer No. 10, pp. 23-25. (Oct. 2004)

McFadden, Patrick. The first thing we do, lets outsource the all the lawyers: an essay [Electronic]. 33 Public Contract Law Journal No. 2, pp. 443-453. (Winter 2004)

Orwell, George. Charles Dickens. [online: http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/

orwell_dickens/4]. Retrieved May 20, 2005.

Prestowitz, Clyde. Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power

to the East. New York: Basic Books, 2005.

Reid, Angus. Shakedown: How the new economy is changing our lives. Toronto:

Doubleday, 1996.

Rulison, Larry. (2004, February 27). Jacobs puts its money on legal outsourcing.

Philadelphia Business Journal. Retrieved online:

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Shouldice, Lee. Outsourcing heating up on many fronts. 24 The Lawyers Weekly No. 23, pp. 3 (October 22, 2004)

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Additional Online Material Examined BUT NOT USED AS REFERENCE

MATERIAL

http://www.coolavenues.com/know/gm/maushami_1.php3

http://www.bmacewen.com/blog/archives/2005/05/what_km_and_leg.html

http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/May-June-2005/scene_brook_mayjun05.msp

http://www.practicesource.com/ale/blog/pivot/entry.php?uid=standard-532

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0401190010jan19,1,3938734.story

http://www.prismlegal.com/wordpress/index.php?p=133&c=1

http://www.practicesource.com/ale/blog/pivot/entry.php?uid=standard-411

http://www.blogsource.org/2005/03/lawyers_outsour.html

http://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/articles/c3/0c027ac3.asp

http://www.internationaltraderelations.com/Article.Outsourcing%20--

%20Law%20(FT%2010.4.04).htm

http://www.citizenreviewonline.org/march2004/outsourcing.htm

http://www.bickelbrewer.com/345.html

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1136737,prtpage-1.cms

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1085626382900

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http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh080105-story03.html

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05195/537848.stm

http://www.cio.com/weighin/column.html?ID=9651

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http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050731/BUSINESS/507310

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Appendix

Representative List of Online Legal Process Outsourcing Firms and Organizations (includes law

firms with a practice that assists other organizations and law firms implement outsourcing

strategies)

Organization Internet Address (http://) Originating Country

E-Lance

www.e-lance.com United States

Legal Research Network

www.lrn.com United States

Kirkland & Ellis LLP

www.kirkland.com United States

Atlas Legal

www.atlaslegal.com United States

Bickel & Brewer

www.bickelbrewer.com United States

Taran Virtual Associates

www.virtualassociates.com Canada

Litem Legal

www.litemlegal.com Canada

IndianLegal

www.indianlegal.net India

Jatin Popat Company

www.jsp-associates.com India

Legal and Paralegal

Services India

http://freewebs.com/legalprofessionals-

india

India

Law Wave Litigation

Support

www.lawwave.com India

Rajinder Narain & Co.

http://www.rajindernarainco.com India

The Shared Services and

Business Process

Outsourcing Association

www.sharedexpertise.org Belgium