Back in my university days, I remember walking past the Graduate Students Office and seeing a photocopied diagram taped to the door. It was called “The Doctoral Candidate Flowchart,” and it provided a series of turns and directions for graduates struggling to get their thesis finally completed. My favourite entry on the flowchart was in… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Outsourcing
Legal outsourcing’s AFL moment
It’s July, we’re in the middle of a record-breaking summer of heat, and the major-league baseball trade deadline is just days away. So naturally, I’m going to talk about football. This isn’t entirely a propos of nothing: the National Football League lockout recently ended with a 10-year collective bargaining agreement, and a frenzy of free-agent… Read more »
The new capitals of law
A minor parlour game for BigLaw cognoscenti is the question of which city will be the next world capital of law. New York has held the unofficial title for many years, although London made a powerful case throughout the 2000s. Down the road, who knows? Maybe Hong Kong or Shanghai, possibly New Delhi or Mumbai;… Read more »
Will-writing and the redefinition of “legal services”
Last month, a BBC investigative program called Panorama exposed a wide range of illegal and unethical practices by “will-writers,” advisors who help people prepare wills and who are not lawyers. One result of that broadcast could be a significant clawback of lawyer regulatory power over the legal services marketplace in the UK, with implications for… Read more »
The evolution of outsourcing
Still in its relative infancy, legal process outsourcing has already had a huge impact on the legal services marketplace: scoring major deals with the likes of Microsoft and Rio Tinto, garnering the attention of private-equity investors, and helping to expose the degree to which law firms have overcharged for the simplest legal work, among other… Read more »
Just in case
“Stuff expands to fill the space available.” If you’ve ever owned a closet, basement or garage at some point in your life, you know how true that is. The corollary, of course, is that the less space you have, the less stuff you find you really need. I once moved six times in the space… Read more »
Momentum
Momentum is one of those things everyone talks about but nobody can ever precisely define or quantify. It’s that sense that things are turning around or gathering speed in a certain direction, usually for the better — with a corollary borrowed from physics that the larger the object and the greater its velocity, the more… Read more »
India: Beyond legal process outsourcing
The symmetry was remarkable. Magic Circle icon Clifford Chance caused major waves in the mainstream legal media this week by announcing plans to cut up to 80 lawyers from its flagship London office, about 10% of the legal professionals there. The move, following layoff notices issued to 20 litigation associates in CC’s New York office… Read more »
A new offshoring strategy?
Another day, another article about a major international law firm getting involved in India’s legal market. Pretty soon, the question’s going to change from “Why is your firm in India?” to “Why isn’t your firm in India?” But today’s entry is notable for other reasons. Howrey LLP, reports The American Lawyer, is opening a new… Read more »
The real risk of offshoring
This article from The Recorder about in-house counsel who send legal work offshore includes a line that goes straight on to my list of favourite quotes. Scott Rickman, associate general counsel at Del Monte Foods, has this to say regarding law firms’ standard warnings about offshoring: “In these articles, there’s always a quote from a… Read more »