Life's Mockery

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On June 2, 2010 Corporate Counsel publishes an article regarding Wipro an Indian-BASED legal process outsourcing company.[

Wipro Legal Process Outsourcing Creates Gold Standard For Customer Value] and the same company will provide LPO services to Microsoft [Wipro to provide LPO to Microsoft’s IP, June 16, 2010]. Wow, I know Apple and Microsoft are always battling in the technology industry but who would have forseen Microsoft’s legal department work  outsourced to India.

On June 14, 2010 i Bridge gets a feature: Demand for Legal Outsourcing Drives Growth at iBridge in Beaverton, which profiles the company based in Oregon which does electronic business solutions for various fields including the legal industry. As stated before, many in the legal field have already noted the impact of the unofficial permissibility for law firms to outsource discovery materials to India for document review. iBridge is that “middle-man” in this instance to get the documents uploaded.

To give you some insight on the day to day o perations: “The company’s growth is driven by the demand for outsourcing of legal industry support services such as early case assessment, information collection and management, hosting and document review. The iBridge team comprises of experienced project managers, technologists, seasoned in-house and contract attorneys admitted to the bar in the U.S. and India.”  See those key words: ‘project mangers’, ‘facility’; ‘contract attorneys.’ Facility, isn’t that a work synonymous with hospitals and manufacturing plants? Attorneys, as other bloggers have called out, are part of the McJob and WalMartization of the legal industry. Those who have survived on working with firms doing similar work, is it not obvious a new career path is needed?

I am actually not surprised at all. Someone informed me a few years ago a company who was doing exactly that where the contract attorneys are akin to the permanent staff of the vendor company thus eliminating the need for a law firm to actually hire attorneys themselves through placement agencies or junior level associates whose primary job was to perform document review. As evidenced by this statement: “This team is often called to supplement law firms and in-house counsel to aid in complex litigation and document review projects.” Talk about business model and changing operations and saving money, well so the argument goes: “The value the firm provides is in enhanced productivity and lowered costs in data heavy litigation.” Though this company is innovative in decreasing costs to law firms. Just imagine the founders of this company don’t have law degrees and likely little to no student loans…the legal industry will never be the same.