Just saw a feature on Global TV about legal work being outsourced to India ($250 an hour in Canada, $25 in India). When you think about legalwork, there is no reason why 80% of what a lawyer does on Bay/King can't also be done by someone in India.
Legal Outsourcing
- Thread starter Rockslinger
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This is more an issue of paralegal jobs being outsourced since if it becomes much more than that who ever is doing so runs the risk of practicing law without a license.Rockslinger said:Just saw a feature on Global TV about legal work being outsourced to India ($250 an hour in Canada, $25 in India). When you think about legalwork, there is no reason why 80% of what a lawyer does on Bay/King can't also be done by someone in India.
I haven’t seen any rush in this direction.
Even if you are the law firm doing the outsourcing are you sure you are getting good law for your jurisdiction? Furthermore, who is held libel in the care of malpractice by the information provider?
Now that many or most manufacturing jobs have left Canada for lower cost jurisdictions, I think the wave of outsourcing SERVICE jobs is gaining momentum. Here are some examples.
1) Friend joined GE as an accounting manager about a year ago. When he arrived on the job, he asked: "Where is my staff?" Answer: "They are in India."
2) Many IT jobs are already in India. I remember when my old company use to hire and bring IT people over to Canada from India. Now they just do what they have to do in India.
3) Call centres - enough said.
4) Data processing - enough said.
Query: Can YOUR job be done as well or better in India?
1) Friend joined GE as an accounting manager about a year ago. When he arrived on the job, he asked: "Where is my staff?" Answer: "They are in India."
2) Many IT jobs are already in India. I remember when my old company use to hire and bring IT people over to Canada from India. Now they just do what they have to do in India.
3) Call centres - enough said.
4) Data processing - enough said.
Query: Can YOUR job be done as well or better in India?
Rockslinger said:Query: Can YOUR job be done as well or better in India?
Having just gone through an outsourcing where a lot of IT work was outsourced to India, the Far East and Costa Rica.... Its not really a case of if your job can be done as well or better....but cheaper....well on paper anyway
A friend works for a large multinational company and they are eliminating regional data processing centres in North America and relocating the work to India because it can be done just as well and at a much lower cost.PDSAjax said:Having just gone through an outsourcing where a lot of IT work was outsourced to India, the Far East and Costa Rica....
My biggest question is information security.Rockslinger said:Just saw a feature on Global TV about legal work being outsourced to India ($250 an hour in Canada, $25 in India). When you think about legalwork, there is no reason why 80% of what a lawyer does on Bay/King can't also be done by someone in India.
Some US companies had their client data stolen, Whether it was stolen in transfer or was hacked out of servers there in India no one knows.
I just think that if it's a Canadian company the work should stay here. Like all these call centers. Why send it to India when the unemployment rate here is high and people are willing to do the job? Why deal with the hassles of customer complaints about the language barriers and the loss of customers (ask Dell ablut customer loss) when the security and technology is here? yes you save some money by sending the work to india and other 3rd world countries but you also run the risk of alienating customers as well as losing them due to a higher unemployment rate. People will pay a little more if they get a higher quality of service. When will bean counters connect the dots?
It use to be that a company could realize cost savings by locating a call centre in New Brunswick or a data processing centre in South Dakota but now they realize even greater cost savings going to India. I recently had to resolve a computer problem and I swear the folks I dealt with in India were as fluent in English as I am and they knew their stuff too. Many multinational companies don't consider themselves Canadian or British or American, they consider themselves to be global.Davy.Biggie said:I just think that if it's a Canadian company the work should stay here. Like all these call centers. Why send it to India when the unemployment rate here is high and people are willing to do the job?
Hmm... "legal work" is not necessarily the same in nature as IT/call centre/manufacturing type work.Rockslinger said:Just saw a feature on Global TV about legal work being outsourced to India ($250 an hour in Canada, $25 in India). When you think about legalwork, there is no reason why 80% of what a lawyer does on Bay/King can't also be done by someone in India.
Also, a Bay/King lawyer does not generally charge $250/hr... perhaps only the not-so-good ones...
If the law firm is cutting its costs by a huge amount I would like to see my costs cut by the same amount. over 400.00 per hour for a partner who only oversees the work is bad enough but when the work is now being done for a fraction of the cost and overseen by by an articling student or an affliliate?
80% of what you think a Bay/King lawyer does is already being done by someone else, or for someone else.Rockslinger said:Just saw a feature on Global TV about legal work being outsourced to India ($250 an hour in Canada, $25 in India). When you think about legalwork, there is no reason why 80% of what a lawyer does on Bay/King can't also be done by someone in India.
It's not uncommon for Bay/King lawyers to charge you 4 hours to write up a brief when what they really did was take a similar brief written for another client that took 4 hours to write, and spend 5 minutes editing it for you. Likely they had some intern do the editing and only reviewed it.
If this globalization intensifies, who is to stop the average joe obtaining goods and services directly from india, china, costa rica...?
With advancement of the internet and technology I think it will happen. We got a taste of that last year when people rushed to buy goods across the border when CDN$ was high.
With advancement of the internet and technology I think it will happen. We got a taste of that last year when people rushed to buy goods across the border when CDN$ was high.
According to the Global TV report, it is possible to educate someone in India on Canadian law in almost the same way that it is possible to educate someone in Toronto. Also, India has a fairly long tradition of British law which is similar to Canadian law. A lot of hours billed by a Bay Street law firm is for "research", this same research can be just as ablely done in India (as in Toronto) in the internet age. Also, there is no need to invest a billion dollars in building a factory as in manufacturing so start-up cost is very low (a desk, a computer and a telephone and you are good to go).scrooge said:Hmm... "legal work" is not necessarily the same in nature as IT/call centre/manufacturing type work.
No one in particular. Clearly, it's greed.vsailor said:....who is to blame?
But, is it greed? Let say you can have a will drawn up by a Bay Street lawyer for $10,000 or by an Indian lawyer for $1,000. Everything else being equal, who would you choose?Meister said:No one in particular. Clearly, it's greed.
The Global TV piece said that a lot of Bay Street billable hours are spent by interns/associates charged out at $250 an hour whereas the same research can be done in India for $25. Would you rather pay $250 or $25? If you choose $25, are you being greedy?
Yes of course you are greedy. Greedy doesn't mean you are getting the best value for the money, it simply means that at the end of the day you have substantially more moolah in the bank as with choosing option A. With any greed there is risk and you are willing to take that risk.Rockslinger said:Would you rather pay $250 or $25? If you choose $25, are you being greedy?
It depends on what you mean by legal work. There are requirements to be registered with the Law Society of Upper Canada that an Indian lawyer won't have.Rockslinger said:Just saw a feature on Global TV about legal work being outsourced to India ($250 an hour in Canada, $25 in India). When you think about legalwork, there is no reason why 80% of what a lawyer does on Bay/King can't also be done by someone in India.
I think the TV program was referring to "grunt" work. The tedious work of research, studying and analyzing case law (foot soldier type stuff). I would imagine that the the actuall legal opinion will be signed by a "certified" (certifiable?) Canadian lawyer.Bobzilla said:It depends on what you mean by legal work. There are requirements to be registered with the Law Society of Upper Canada that an Indian lawyer won't have.
Talking about outsourcing, did you know that some Canadians are going to Pakistan to get kidney transplants because it is much cheaper and much faster? Guess they would rather personally pay than die on some Canadian waiting list.
