May 30, 2008 -- Bethesda, Maryland law firm sues US Government and India-based LPO to determine if transmission of data from the US to India results in waiver of Fourth Amendment protection of the data. A lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by a Maryland law firm that was solicited by an offshore LPO attempts to obtain a declaratory judgment about whether electronic transmission of information to an LPO in India in connection with litigation involving American citizens results in a "windfall of information" about American citizens to the US government. The complaint states that electronic transmissions to India may result in waiver of attorney-client communications and disclosure of client confidentiality, which is inconsistent with expectations of privacy that Americans have in the documents produced in the course of civil litigation. The firm claims there is a likelihood of damage to American users of legal services when their data is transmitted to India. This case is an interesting challenge to the use of LPOs abroad. It also seeks an answer to the question whether the firms that provide data to overseas LPOs are required to so inform their clients.
January 18, 2008 -- ACI's India LPO Summit was a success with speakers from CPA, New Galexy, Bodhi Global and SDD. Protection of patents and intellectual property was a key subject addressed by Chris Veator, Executive Vice President of CPA, one of the event sponsors. The response was good enough that ACI intends to reprise the conference in the fall of 2008, again in New York. Watch this space for a further announcement.
October 26, 2007 -- American Conference Institute Announces its LPO Summit for January 16-17, 2008 in New York. See the "LPO Summit" page for information on this timely meeting and a link to the full agenda and registration materials. A special discount is available to users of this website until November 16, 2007.
October 25, 2007 -- Karlyn D. Stanley, a member of the LPO Network editorial board, has joined Infosys BPO Legal Services to develop and promote the company's LPO capabilities. Infosys BPO Legal Services and Karlyn's role in the comply will be profiled in the November 2007 issue of LPO Network.
October 3, 2007 -- Corporate Risk Advisors is happy to announced distribution of the sixth montly issue of LPO Network, with free distribution to more than 3,500 companies, law firms and other interested readers. We've just learned that Michael R. Geske, an attorney licensed in the District of Columbia and Pennsylvania, joined Aphelion Legal Solutions as its Chief Operating Officer in September. Michael has 17 years of experience as a litigator and experience in complex civil litigation, including federal bench and jury trials and appeals.
August 27, 2007 -- Corporations, lawyers in private practice and LPO providers shouldn't miss the August 21, 2007 story in Bloomberg news about the use of LPOs in India. See "Jones Day, Kirkland Send Work to India to Cut Costs" by Cynthia Cotts and Liane Kufchock. As of today the article appeared at this webpage:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aBo8DnfekWZQ&refer=news
July 17, 2007 -- LPO Network is happy to announce that
George B. Hefferan III, Vice President and General Counsel of
Mindcrest Inc. has been added to the Board of Editors. Mindcrest, a legal outsourcing firm, provides legal support in finance, human resources, real estate, and other areas, and recently opened a new 400-seat facility in Pune, India, to increase its service capacity. See the
Mindcrest expansion story as it appeared in the India Express at
http://http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=232625. Mr. Hefferan’s feature article for
LPO Network will appear in the August 2007 issue, on the subject of due diligence in selecting an LPO for litigation support.
July 2, 2007 -- NALPOC News. The NALPOC trade association for LPOs is under formation. Its formation is being handled by the public relations officer of SDD Global Solutions, a KPO organization located in Mysore, India. SDD's chairman, Russell Smith, is the organizer of NALPOC. Information on the NALPOC's prototype webpage is designed only to give the public a "feel" for the proposed organization.
June 14, 2007 -- Karlyn D. Stanley, attorney and member of the Editorial Board of LPO Network, spoke about Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) issues at LegalTech 2007 in Los Angeles, California. Her presentation was part of the panel, "Outsourcing in Action: A Practical Approach to Offshore Legal Outsourcing." Co-presenters include Robert Armstrong, Kunoor Chopra and Kevin Lacey. Ms. Chopra, CEO of LawScribe, Inc., is also an LPO Network Editorial Board member.
June 3, 2007 -- LPO Association Forming. An email from SDD Global Solutions Pvt of Mysore, India announces the formation of the National Association of Legal Process Offshoring Companies (NALPOC) which is seeking new members. (The association is being organized by a KPO owned and managed by an American law firm (US law firms are not permitted to practice law in India), Smith Dornan Dehn, whose website is at
www.sddlaw.com. Contact NALPOC through Vidya Devaiah at
vidyad@sddglobal.com.
May 15, 2007 -- Bar Associations Describe Ethical Conditions for Use of Indian LPO Providers. Read the summaries of the two opinions below for a current view of the ethics issues implicated in the area of Unauthorized Practice of Law (UPL) when LPO is utilized.
San Diego County Bar Association Ethics Opinon 2007-1 Gives Go-Ahead to LPO.
A long and thoughtful ethics opinion recently issued by the San Diego County (CA) Bar Association is a useful tool in the arsenal of supporters and users of legal process outsourcing (LPO). In a case where a small firm with limited experience in intellectual property litigation won dismissal of a case on a summary judgment motion, an Indian LPO (LegalWorks) did much of the work on an outsource basis for the California lawyers. The San Diego Bar opinion considered at length the attorney’s obligations to his client and noted that “outsourcing does not alter the attorney’s obligations to the client, even though [it] may help the attorney discharge those obligations at lower cost.”
At the heart of the issue is whether the work done by an LPO provider under contract with a California attorney was unauthorized practice of law when the California attorney exercised independent judgment in deciding how and whether to use the LPO’s work on the client’s behalf. The Legal Ethics Committee of the SDCBA said it was not, and that “the attorney does not aid in the unauthorized practice of law where he retains supervisory control over and responsibility for those tasks constituting the practice of law.” In this matter, the California lawyer “retained full control over the representation of the client and exercised independent judgment in reviewing the draft work performed by those who were not California attorneys.” ... [T]he company to whom work was outsourced … assisted the California lawyer in practicing law in this state, not the other way around. And that is not prohibited.”
Whether the California lawyer ought to have reported to his client that the work was outsourced to India is unsettled. The Legal Ethics Committee said “ … in the absence of a specific understanding between the attorney and client to the contrary, the ‘reasonable expectation’ of the client is that the attorney retained …, using the resources within the attorney's firm, will perform the work required to develop the legal theories and arguments to be presented to the trial court, and that the attorney will have a significant role in preparing correspondence and court filings.” If an offshore LPO is used, will the client’s reasonable expectation be disappointed and ethical problems follow? The opinion does not answer the question.
What if the American lawyer does not have subject matter expertise in the work being outsourced? Satisfaction of the professional duty to act competently means that an attorney “must be able to determine for himself or herself whether the work under review is competently done. To make such a determination, the attorney must know enough about the subject in question to judge the quality of the work.” Thus, the referring U.S. attorney might have to bring himself up to speed in the substantive area to ethically justify outsourcing work to an LPO.
Finally the opinion states that supervising an offshore vendor requires more effort than supervising a local lawyer, because “obstacles can arise when work is assigned to foreign companies. … In order to satisfy the duty of competence, an attorney should have an understanding of the legal training and business practices in the jurisdiction where the work will be performed.” In other words, those who plan to use offshore LPOs ought to familiarize themselves with the legal training in those countries and their business practices. This might be just the incentive some American lawyers need to hop a plane to India and meet the LPO providers in person!
New York City Bar Association Formal Opinon 2006-3 Addresses Appropriate Supervision of LPO Providers to Avoid "Unauthorized Practice of Law."
An August 2006 opinion of the City of New York City Bar's Committee on Professional and Judicial Ethics (Opinion 2006-3) notes that “the lawyer’s supervising the non-lawyer is key” to the lawyer’s avoiding the UPL problem. The extent of supervision required is an amount “reasonable under the circumstances,” but the New York lawyer must “at every step shoulder complete responsibility for the non-lawyer’s work.” This means applying professional skill and judgment in deciding what work to outsource, and review of the work to ensure its quality. The required level of supervision should be determined based on the service provider's level of experience and the amount of work being outsourced.
Read the full text of the New York City Bar's opinion at