This is not an existential or philosophical inquiry, at least not yet. I have been asked many times, what I am doing here or going to do here for a year. I am working for a company called CPA Global and they provide legal outsourcing services.
Which I suppose leads to the next question – what is legal outsourcing? In general, it can be a great many things, you can outsource documents to be reviewed in an ongoing litigation matter (which could be millions of pages), it could be due diligence review of contracts in a major acquisition (which could also be millions of pages) and it could be contract review services as well.
Legal Services Outsourcing (also known as Legal Process Outsourcing) is a very nascent industry – and I think very much still in the building out stages. It is growing by leaps and bounds in India and most of the work comes from the US – to try and offset the exorbitant fees incurred by businesses.
In my case, I’ve been assigned (with two other mentor lawyers and a lead lawyer) to work with a team of 12-14 Indian lawyers and we provide services to just one client. The work that comes in is varied and from various jurisdictions. It is my job to review the work and provide comments which range from editing for content as well as grammar, spelling and format. In addition, my role is to help train the lawyers to become more like US lawyers – ultimately so that I am no longer needed.
It’s been interesting so far seeing the differences between US lawyers and Indian lawyers and the training we receive v. what is provided here. During my first week, I learned that being a lawyer in India is like choosing a 4th or 5th tier career, behind things like medicine, engineering, science and commerce. Many people who couldn’t get into those areas in university end up in law school. Thus, the caliber of students in the programs is not as high as you would expect – although this is slowly changing as time passes (this was revealed to me by the lawyers themselves, so I’m not making any judgments here). I don’t think that ultimately that will determine the success or lack thereof of either the business or the lawyer. Lawyering isn’t rocket science, but requires the desire to learn and understand as well as a dollop of common sense. This just means that we better be good teachers – a new role for me.
In addition, there are language issues. Since the Indian lawyers are not native English speakers, there are common issues with grammar and reading comprehension – we use the word “the” at least twice as many times as they do – and there are issues with subjunctive and conditional tenses. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to work in a language that is not my native tongue and then to have to work in it in both the US and the UK versions. (Our client is multinational, so depending on the jurisdiction, the type of English used has to be adjusted!)
Anyway, this is why I’m here and how I’m spending my days.
