If you’ve been following the ever growing trend of UK firms outsourcing work to India you’ll be interested by this editorial and article in this week’s UK Lawyer magazine.
In the editorial they comment:
Selling legal outsourcing to clients is easy. Selling it to your own staff is a different matter.
That’s the task facing Simmons & Simmons managing partner Mark Dawkins after the firm signed a deal to use a team of lawyers in India (see story).
The Mumbai unit will tackle document review, due diligence, document production and research. In other words, the work traditionally done by paralegals, trainees and associates.
You could forgive junior lawyers across the UK for feeling like they are under siege. Salaries have been frozen, training contracts are harder to come by than ever, and scores of associates have been axed by their firms in the past 12 months.
Now, the bread-and-butter work of the junior lawyer can be done in India at half the cost. It’s a pretty gloomy picture.
Dawkins will be telling his staff that if the scheme is a success, the firm is likely to have more rather than less work as clients flock to lower rates.
He’ll need all his powers of persuasion to get the whole firm on board.
And you can find the story
Simmons goes live with outsourcing project
Simmons & Simmons has launched an innovative legal process outsourcing (LPO) scheme, six months after pinpointing LPO as a key part of its strategy.
Under a year-long agreement with outsourcing specialist Integreon, Simmons will employ five lawyers in Mumbai, who will work for the firm on a full-time basis.
They will work on document review, due diligence and research, recording around 800 hours a month.
Reported at??? http://www.thelawyer.com/simmons-goes-live-with-outsourcing-project/1002300.article
