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Part - IV

The kind of work is being outsourced to Indian lawyers involves creating databases of legal records, indexing them, updating them and mining the data processing to facilitate the process of researching cases for lawyers. It eliminates the tedious data processing aspect of legal work, which is usually done by junior lawyers. This industry is relatively small in size, and is yet to catch on in India probably because of the skills needed in terms of familiarity with European and US laws.

The work being outsourced is not only legal; nor is it only secretarial. It is believed to be an ideal mix of core legal work like research works, and secretarial works like preparing drafts and letters. The services vary from the type of clients who outsource the work. The legal executives of many multi-national corporations get hardcore legal work done in India.

• For trained in-house lawyers of overseas corporations, it is hardcore legal work.

• For businesses that service overseas law firms, it ranges from indexing and scanning documents, word processing, legal transcription, coding, converting physical data into electronic form, digital dictation, to reviewing transactional and litigation documents, drafting contracts, research memoranda and due diligence reports, prosecuting patents, surveying laws of various jurisdictions, and collecting debt.

• For international publishers, it is interpreting and classifying US court decisions, possibly even writing "head notes" Creating databases of legal records, indexing and updating them, are gaining importance.

Outsourcing Legal Work To India

According to various studies, jobs most vulnerable to the new wave of outsourcing include medical-transcription services, stock-market research for financial firms, customer-service call centres, legal online-database research, and payroll and other "back office" activities.

Some are saying that outsourcing applies to virtually any industry and this could be true. Offshore outsourcing has trickled down to the legal profession as well. Legal research and other back-office work carried out at law firms may be among the next set of white-collar jobs to move offshore in big numbers.

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*Contributed by -
Shuchi Singla,
Global Business Operations, Semester-11,
Shri Ram College Of Commerce,
University Of Delhi.