One of the best things about a weblog is that it gives you proof that you said something first or spotted a trend way back when. In my case, I first blogged about the outsourcing to India trend in this January 2003 post. Now, almost three years later, outsourcing continues to grow. As this article from an Indian newspaper (December 25, 2005) reports:
The revenue from outsourcing of legal services from India is growing every year and is estimated to grow ten times in the next five years from the current level of US dollar 61 million. In a recently released report ‘Offshoring
Legal Services to India’, ValueNotes, a leading provider of
intelligence and research services, estimated that the sector employs
around 1,800 professionals and expects this to grow to 24,000 by 2010.
The increasing interest in offshore services shows that firms are pressured to keep costs low – and that should be good news for us solo and small firm lawyers, because it may open up new opportunities.
Very few people has fastened on the opportunity that this presents to small firms / Solos. I think the leverage opportunity is considerable and spoke about those issues when I was recently interviewed on the topic for an article in Canadian Lawyer. No question that you were and are bang on the money.
Extracts from the article on my blog:
http://www.robhyndman.com/2005/12/13/article-on-legal-outsourcing-in-canadian-lawyer-magazine/