Aphelion Insider

A prosecutor friend of mine recently forwarded me a blog post from Mark Bennett, a Houston, Texas criminal defense lawyer, entitled, “Yeah, Um, I Think We’ll Pass on This One.” In response to an email solicitation offering LPO services from New Delhi based law firm G.P. Law Solutions, Bennett writes:

If I were in some area of the law in which the outcome didn’t matter, I might let you summarize a deposition just for grins. As it is, though, I would not allow you to touch one of my clients’ cases if you were the last “advoate” on Earth.

It’s not simply your cavalier attitude toward indefinite articles, nor your charming omission of verbs connecting subjects and objects, nor your Generation-Y approach to spelling and grammar generally. It is, rather, that your tolerance for “quality issues” is clearly much higher than my clients (whose futures are on the line) would consent to have applied to their cases.

It might be surprising to Bennett and others who have received similar solicitations that I agree with the underlying substance of Bennett’s reaction to G.P. Law Solutions.  And I certainly find his writing to be quite entertaining.  Whether Bennett is or is not open to the idea of offshore support is unclear from his blog post.  It is clear that Bennett is not open to the idea of hiring poor support staff.  And that is how it should be.  As lawyers, we must zealously protect and advance our clients’ interests, and that includes ensuring our support staff and outside vendors provide high quality services.

While an email solicitation riddled with grammatical and typographical errors may not be a perfect proxy for quality, it is certainly a good one.  But that same email solicitation is also a very poor proxy for the overall quality of all Indian attorneys as well as any individual Indian attorney unconnected to the poorly drafted email.  Unfortunately, bad experiences involving LPOs or Indian lawyers happen - whether those experiences amount to nothing more than similar solicitations or whether those experiences involve actual work offshored and performed below acceptable standards.  But generalizing based on certain bad experiences may prevent a corporate legal department, law firm, or a lawyer from leveraging the value that the right LPO can provide.

Value is a function of quality and cost.  Offshore resources are generally thought to enhance value by minimizing the cost component, but many potential buyers of LPO services have a legitimate concern that the loss in quality will more than offset the cost component of the value function.  This thinking has prevented potential buyers of LPO services from using offshore resources.  But the quality of legal work typically offshored is not a function of geography or nationality.  Certainly, geography precludes an Indian attorney from making a court appearance.  It does not preclude discovery related document review, contract analysis, immigration support, and similar services provided by LPOs.  The quality function is multi-variable - it involves, in no particular order of importance: aptitude, motivation, education, experience, training, focus, supervision, and organizational process.

The right LPO works to ensure the specific elements of the quality function are addressed.  The LPO should implement recruiting measures designed to hire only those with high levels of aptitude, motivation, education (providing a sufficient base from which to render services in connection with American legal matters), and experience.  After hiring the right people, the LPO should maintain a work atmosphere designed to encourage employee loyalty and continued motivation.  The LPO should provide substantial general and project specific training conducted by subject matter experts.  This training should be on-going, and not limited just to initial training.  The LPO should provide focused work assignments, so that employees are not committed to too many different projects.  The LPO should ensure the level of supervision necessary to prevent errors and ensure high quality work.  And finally, the LPO should implement a logical, tested, and tailored process to each project.  Under these circumstances, working with an LPO may, indeed, prove to be the best value for certain legal and legal support functions.

The existence of specific Indian lawyers that may not be suited for supporting American legal practices and clients does not justify the conclusion that all Indian lawyers are not suited for supporting American legal practices.  I certainly do not suggest that Bennett drew this conclusion after receiving the solicitation from G.P. Law Solutions, but it is a conclusion commonly drawn.  It is also a conclusion that ignores the reality that quality is a function of multiple variables, none of which are geography or nationality.