The article talks about how US companies are now looking offshore (India) for their legal work. According to the article, the main justification used by US lawyers who use the services of KPOs (Knowledge Process Outsourcing, as opposed to Business Process Outsourcing or BPO) that outsource the legal profession is that it is unethical for a lawyer to subject their client high fees for legal work that they can outsource to lawyers all the way in India for a markedly lower fee.
The article said: "The considerable savings is perhaps one of the reason Forrester Research, based in Cambridge, Mass., has projected the offshoring of 29,000 legal jobs by the end of the year and as many as 79,000 by 2015."
The outsourced services include document review, research and support for compliance functions.
I wonder if the Philippines is not far from following the footsteps of India in this new outsourcing trend, considering that a large part of our economy's foreign investment relies on providing offshore services.
There are bound to be ethical issues involved, not least of which is the privileges that come with the lawyer-client relationship.
