Legal Outsourcing; liberalisation of legal services
Résumé :
[en] The outsourcing of legal services to India is becoming increasingly popular among U.S. and U.K. law firms and corporations. This thesis seeks to discuss three main topics surrounding legal process outsourcing (LPO): its emerging trends, the legal challenges it raises and the hitherto unrecognized potential it holds. Firstly, this thesis clarifies concepts of LPO and its operating models practiced by U.S. and U.K. law firms and corporations. Whenever there is outsourcing in the manufacturing or service sectors, concerns over job losses in the domestic territory are raised by politicians and policy-makers. Accordingly, this research critically discusses the impact of outsourcing on unemployment with a particular focus on legal sector jobs. Secondly, the outsourcing of legal services creates significant challenges for ethics rules and data protection laws. The act of sending legal work overseas by U.S. lawyers may violate American legal ethics rules including those related to conflicts of interest, supervision, fee- sharing, client confidentiality, and attorney-client privilege. Self-regulation is the hallmark of the U.S. legal profession. This thesis therefore reflects, in the first instance, upon the issue of the independence of lawyers who have established a ‘sheltered’ industry for themselves by creating rules that prevent non-lawyers from practicing law. Thereafter, acknowledging the presence of the U.S. legal ethics rules, this thesis provides an explanation as to how a U.S. lawyer could outsource legal works to India without compromising core legal ethics rules. Thirdly, this research explores the hidden potential of LPO to improve access to justice. The outsourcing of legal services to India suffers from a negative image among certain sections of the American legal profession, but has only been discussed so far in the context of law firms and corporations. This thesis develops an altogether new proposal where Indian LPO professionals could help alleviate the access to justice problem among indigent and low-income populations of the United States.
