This, we have to say, is the most interesting piece of news we’ve seen all week. As reported in the Lawyer (UK) it appears as though CC has outsourced the work on over 300 deals to its Indian LPO centre.
The Lawyer report reveals..
Clifford Chance passed 12,000 hours of work to its Indian service centre in the last financial year, the equivalent level that would be done by seven London associates at 100 per cent utilisation.
Indian legal website LegallyIndia.com reported that lawyers in the Indian knowledge centre, which is based just outside Delhi, worked with 15 offices around the firm?s international network, doing work on over 300 client projects.
The website quoted the firm?s annual report as saying that the knowledge centre, which has grown from four lawyers in 2007 to around 30 now, has enabled Clifford Chance to significantly reduce client bills.
http://www.thelawyer.com/1002130.article?nl=TL-LND
What we’d like to know is whether CC were happy for? Legally India.com to release that information. We think it’s a brave move if they have, as we can’t imagine many firms would be happy for the outside world how many hours / deals they have passed over to their LPO.
We’d imagine, for example, that Australian firms would rather self destruct than admit that work of this scale has gone to India.. and we expect their thinking will be the same in 2015 as it is now.
Will firms keep this sort of information close to their chests or as time goes on will they see it as a marketing advantage to advertise the fact that more and more work is going to India.
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