NO MORE MENIAL JOBS: Young Associates set to do the real job.

NO MORE MENIAL JOBS: Young Associates set to do the real job.

An Analysis of the first part of the article ‘Outsourcing- The New and Improved Business Model Big Law Needs’ in AmLaw Daily (By Stephen Harper)

The piece by Stephen Harper is available at:

http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2010/08/harperoutsourcing.html

In his article, Harper talks about how outsourcing has for quite some time now been a ‘profit-maximizing’ technique throughout corporate America. Though it has resulted in a loss of jobs for a lot of people in the United States, it has been accepted globally simply as a ‘necessary price’ for firms to thrive in the modern competitive market.

Legal process outsourcing is however, a comparatively newer phenomenon. It is only recently that it has received such hype throughout the world. Quoting the New York Times article in this regard(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/business/global/05legal.html?_r=1), Harper notes that outsourcing is quite advantageous in the legal profession when it comes to ‘mundane legal tasks’ like due diligence and document review.

According to the New York Times Article, we note that, legal outsourcing is steadily gaining popularity in India. According to Valuenotes (a Pune-based consultancy firm, reported in the article), the number of legal outsourcing companies in India has dramatically increased from 40 in 2005 to more than 140 by the end of 2009. Apart from this, the revenue of Indian legal outsourcing firms is expected to grow to $440 million in 2010 and easily cross the $1 billion mark by 2014.

Harper notes that clients will thus move towards law firms who have outsourced attorneys who work at lower rates and effectively perform ‘necessary but no-critical work’. According to him, young graduates may as a result face a dearth of entry-level jobs at these law firms. On the other hand, he states that though this might be bad for these graduates who miss out, it will mean a comfortable and better standard of work for the best that get through with the law firm. This is because such associates will not have to perform the ‘menial jobs’ which usually young associates do nowadays.

Thus, we see if that the legal profession at the top-most level is set to be more and more elite, with only the best being able to survive at the top. The graduates getting into law firms as associates, in the era of legal process outsourcing, will not have to do the so-called ‘menial jobs’ but instead concentrate on matters strictly important for the law-firm and the type of cases it handles. With the crème only benefiting, the legal profession is set to break new barriers as the standard improves considerably all over. The good research and backroom work by the outsourcing firms in India along with effective performance by the on-site law firms is all set to bring about a drastic change in the legal industry.

The analysis of the second part will follow soon.

Written by:

Anagh Sengupta,