U.S. losing legal work to overseas firms

[OhioChick]

Posted Tuesday, December 12, 2006

If the jobs at General Motors or DaimlerChrysler's plant in Delaware suddenly moved to China, people wouldn't be shocked. Manufacturing jobs have been moving offshore for years.

But what if major corporations decided it was cheaper working with lawyers in India?

The practice already has begun. And the Wilmington-based DuPont Co. is recognized as a pioneer in the growing trend.

The legal offshoring industry is estimated to be about $60 million to $80 million today -- tiny in comparison with the estimated $225 billion U.S. legal industry -- but it has the potential to grow up to $4.7 billion by 2011-12 in India alone, according to a report by Crisil Research and Information Services.

The cost of working with lawyers in India averages $50 to $70 an hour, compared with an American lawyer with the equivalent experience who would get paid $200 or more. An Indian lawyer working as a temp would cost $20 or less, where as one in this country would cost up to $70 an hour.

http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061212/BUSINESS/612120341/1003

[acmavm]

1. Pretty soon there won't be a job left in this country.

Time to put some big-time restraints on corporate America.

[philosophie_en_rose]

2. This is just not okay.

If a lawyer in this country can't just go around practicing law without a license, neither should anyone else.

[Divernan]

4. Corporate attorneys don't need to have passed a bar exam.

I knew a guy who started as an engineer, got a law degree and then worked for Westinghouse as a patent attorney. He never passed any state's bar exam, but as long as he worked "in-house" and never set foot before a judge, it was all right with the state bar examiners. There's no licensing for paralegals, and I bet India will be providing a lot of those, with some attorney nominally supervising their work.

[lapfog_1]

3. There are lots and lots of Indian and Chinese

young people in B-schools. Pretty soon (if not already), the MANAGEMENT jobs will be outsourced. Once the CEO and the VPs are in India, make that will wake up the idiots in the boardrooms.

[Cobalt Violet]

5. Well US lawayers can always pick lettuce for $50.00 hr.

Lawyering has just become another of many jobs Americans don't want to do (for $5.00hr).

[SheilaT]

6. I wonder what percentage

of lawyering is done in-house as compared to those who litigate? As it is, an awful lot of what attorneys used to do by themselves (Draft pleadings, doing research, interviewing clients, for example)
is now done by paralegals who make considerably less than the stated pay for lawyers in India.

I was about to say, as a comforting thought, that at least the jobs at McDonald's and that ilk won't be outsourced, but they could become almost completely mechanized. Pizza delivery, what my younger son did last summer, might remain performed by real humans.