Much of the ruckus about off shoring legal work has died down, but there is the occasional recrudescence. Two vendors were mentioned in the Nat’l L.J., Vol. 29, Jan. 15, 2007 at 16 as part of the legal process outsourcing industry: Pangea3 LLC and Lumen Legal. Others I am aware of include Office Tiger, Atlas Legal Research and Xansa (See my posts of Nov. 14, 2005 and references cited regarding off-shore resources; and Jan. 27, 2006 and Jan. 6, 2006 and references cited.). OffShoreXPerts listed 875 cites when I searched for “Legal/Law Outsourcing” on Jan. 27, 2007.
The article makes the distinction between fungible and non-fungible categories of legal work, including in the fungible categories such tasks as “review of electronic documents, contract review, patent application drafting and even legal research and writing.” The gamut of tasks that can be done is potentially huge (See my post of Jan. 25, 2007 with a different slant on commodity legal services.), the dollars (and rupees) and stake are huger, and the potential implications of offshore legal services over time are, well, hugest.