Legal Research Outsourcing – News From India

While our India readers are doubtless aghast at the Law Commission’s bold reforms on stamp duty – you can pay any transaction/court fee by demand draft/cash/postal order/banker’s cheque instead of through non-judicial stamp papers or special stamps – and at the breakneck speed of Indian Commissions of Inquiry – less than two months for a J&K fatality inquiry, and at Stalin’s announcement of a financial city – our North American readers will be puzzling over the implications of stories in today’s Evening Standard in London and the American Lawyer in New York.

The Standard headline screams:

Mumbai law: 1,000 City staff ‘will lose jobs’ as legal work goes to India

It leads:

MORE than a thousand London lawyers could be made redundant by the end of the year because their jobs will be outsourced to India, it was claimed today.

India’s largest law firm, FoxMandal Little, said the amount of legal work being sent there would double this year.

Soumitro Chatterjee, head of FoxMandal Little’s outsourcing arm, believes the boom could result in more than 3,000 corporate lawyers and administration staff in cities such as Mumbai and Delhi going on the pay roll of City firms and British companies by the start of next year.

Mr Chatterjee said he had met representatives from 10 City firms in recent weeks – each looking to outsource up to 100 legal jobs.

The story talks about the type of work, and the pay they’re making:

Pooja Chatterjee, 23 and Mehnaz Sultana, 25
Junior Lawyers for New Galexy Partners in Mumbai
Salary: Rs 48,000 (£6,000)

Both studied a five-year business administration and law degree at Symbiosis Law School, in the city of Pune, and joined the firm in June last year after graduating. Ms Sultana said: “The only difference with what firms like Allen & Overy do and us is that we don’t talk to the clients.” Ms Chatterjee last year worked on a “major London Olympics contract for an American construction firm”. She said: “We are getting good experience on important UK work.”

Delnaz Palkhivala, 36
Senior Lawyer for New Galexy Partners in Mumbai
Salary: Rs 1.2 million (£15,000)

Graduated in law from Sheffield University in 2000. She said: “We’ve done contracts for BAA, we’ve negotiated contracts with O2. They’ve been throwing big contracts at us, because they know they can save money by not doing it with the Magic Circle firms.”

The American Lawyer reports that “India Beckons to U.S. Lawyers
Outsourcing firms looking to hire those with American litigation experience”

The companies are hiring as many as 24 U.S. lawyers during the next year to manage English-speaking Indian professionals who perform legal tasks at a fraction of U.S. rates. The Indian lawyers do everything from patent prosecution work to document review to litigation preparation to legal research for law firms that include Kirkland & Ellis and companies such as General Electric Co. The recession has not only stoked client interest in the lower-cost option, with rates of about $25 to $100 an hour, but it has also made hiring U.S. lawyers more affordable, the companies’ executives said.

“Increasingly, we are finding lawyers in the U.S. willing to go and work in India,” said Ganesh Natarajan, the Mumbai, India-born and U.S.-educated attorney who is the Chicago-based chief executive of Mindcrest.

Lest Slaw readers think this has nothing to do with research and legal information, we should attend to next month’s ILTA session on Reducing Costs of Legal Research: Best Practices Onshore and Offshore