My loyal correspondent Rob
Hyndman pointed out a feature article in Legal
Affairs, "Are Your Lawyers in New York or New Delhi?,"
which takes on the pregnant issue of outsourcing with, to my
mind (and Rob’s), fairly underwhelming levels of insight.  In
fact, if you only read one of the two cited pieces, read Rob’s.  Aside
from some truly bone-headed mis-statements in the Legal
Affairs piece ("The market for outsourced legal work is
expected to reach $163 billion by next year…," for example,
which is a figure higher than the total revenue of all U.S.
law firms last time we looked), it amounts to a compendium
of anecdotes, vignettes, and conspicuously self-serving quotes
from vendors side-by-side with double-talk from presumed, or
should we say accused, outsourcing clients, such as this blather
from Microsoft: “[as] a global company, we are constantly
working to improve our ability to serve our customers worldwide
in the most cost effective, efficient manner.”  I mean,
who writes this stuff?  Are they on drugs?

Be that as it may, outsourcing is a live issue, and its
prominence and impact will only grow, not diminish. 

So, what is to be done?  As Adam Smith himself would
acknowledge, and David
Ricardo would surely confirm, there’s no going back.  Indian
lawyers (not to pick on them, but that seems to be where
the action is today)  are demonstrably talented, native-language
English speakers with a common law tradition, can still afford
three servants on their seemingly rock-bottom salaries, and
conveniently work while we sleep.  Worse—if you
want to look at things that way—is that technology
not only enables the instantaneous communication that can
make them as much a member of the team as your office-mate,
but technology facilitates the redistribution and re-use
of templates, model documents, work-flow processes, and so
forth.   Once your firm’s intellectual know-how
is up for grabs, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle,
can you?

Not so fast; let’s not panic.  Start by reversing your
perspective and looking at all these developments from the
client’s viewpoint.  Taking a first-stab draft of a
commodity document in India?  How, precisely, is that
so different from doing the same with a first-year associate?  Automating
(so much as possible) other commodity transactions (patent
applications) or sub-pieces of litigation (interrogatories
in a sexual harassment case)—this is neither a threat
to your associates’ professional development nor a threat
to your revenues and gross margins. 

The larger point is that "India" represents, at a conceptual
level, the equivalent of a basic knowledge management system.  What
is KM, after all, but an attempt to make basic document generation
more productive and efficient?  Nothing is wrong with
that, and by extension nothing is wrong with taking advantage
of what India can provide for the basic garden-variety
items (which are intellectually uninteresting anyway, by
definition).   This reminds me of politicans grandstanding
about the loss of garment factories to Mexico or China:
  Is your dream for your kids that they can grow up and
go to work in a textile mill?

Let’s not forget, people, that the law can and should be
a noble profession—call me old-fashioned, I still believe
that.   Judgment, reserve, foresight, clarity,
wisdom:  Don’t you aspire to these, for your own sake
and your clients?   They
can never be bottled, and they can never be outsourced.