But it is SO IMPORTANT that we all write in.
Read below:
"YOUR COMMENTS SOUGHT
MAY 7, 2010 DEADLINE
The ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 is studying the ethical and professional regulatory implications of legal process outsourcing in a domestic and international context. The Commission is reviewing the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, existing ethics opinions and other literature and studies about this topic. The Commission is also interested in gathering information about domestic and international legal process outsourcing from lawyers, law firms, clients and outsourcing providers, and developed the following questions to do so. We look forward to hearing from you. Please do not feel constrained to limit your responses to the information sought by these questions. We are interested in receiving whatever information you feel is relevant. Please e-mail your responses by May 7, 2010 to Senior Research Paralegal Natalia Vera at veran@staff.abanet.org"
http://www.abanet.org/ethics2020/
I suggest you send the following email to Ms. Vera today (feel free to paraphrase):
Dearest Ms. Vera,
Your organization has ruined my life. By allowing Big Law to ship attorney jobs overseas, you have essentially destroyed the legal industry. It is illogical that a lawyer in India who has not attended an ABA accredited law school or taken the Bar Exam or the MPRE, can practice law in New York more easily than an Alabama Lawyer. In my opinion, your organization is playing with fire. It's a matter of time before a foreign attorney who is not subject to the laws of the U.S. engages in insider trading or likewise nefarious conduct. At this point, I am not sure whose interests you are out to protect. As an attorney, I am certain you don't think of my interests when you pass laws giving jobs to foreigners. Your relationship with me ends with ABA membership and a magazine subscription. There are legions of unemployed attorneys out there that should be doing this work, not third party nationals. When will you help them. It's your fault they are unemployed and unemployable. I am praying for the collapse of the ABA.
Thank you!
Sincerely,
Your Name
Merry Christmas
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[image: Merry Christmas]
Hope you’re having a good one. If not, hope it isn’t too awful.
Use as an open thread for nice things if you wish.
23 hours ago
Posts
These ABA assholes aren't even trying to hide it anymore.
ReplyDeleteI'm an in-house lawyer and a big fan of your blog. Whenever I meet someone who is thinking about law school, I strongly encourage them to read the scam blogs and to be skeptical of the marketing promises that the schools make. That being said, I think you're letting your emotions cloud your judgment. On the one hand, while there are strong incentives to outsource legal work away from big firms, the quality suffers and the level of supervision that the US counsel is supposed to exercise is rarely up to standard.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree that outsourcing legal work to India is a terrible idea. But I think that focusing on why it's bad legal practice, and not just bad for you personally, might be a better way to go.
Angel, writing letters to this criminal organization is going to be about as effective as asking your cat not to chase mice or attack bird nests. The ONLY way you MIGHT get through to these cockroaches is to show them how outsourcing will negatively affect Biglaw - and the industry as a whole.
ReplyDeleteI will spend my time on more enjoyable and fruitful pursuits, such as visiting Zion's National Park and catching a few baseball games this month. This will simply be a better use of my time.
Well.. I wrote it that way for dramatic flare. I will re-write it.
ReplyDeleteDearest Ms. Vera,
As an attorney who has done document review at time to get by during this Great Recession, I am in a unique position to tell you whether the outsourcing of legal work to countries such as India should continue. When doing document review, you are privy to all sorts of information that one could use to engage in insider trading. However, because we are barred in the United States, no one should make such a foolhardy decision as to risk his/her career for a the possibility of a windfall. However, the same cannot be said of foreign attorneys. The ABA, which accredits American law schools, has no influence over foreign law schools or licensing standards. Furthermore, these foreign lawyers are not under the jurisdiction of the U.S. should they engage in criminal activity. Big Law has been pushing for outsourcing because, in part, of pressure from huge corporations that are seeking to save money on legal costs. Big Law is trying to make their clients happy by finding cheaper ways of providing the same service. However, they are all short-sighted and time will surely prove that the foreign lawyers are un-regulated and un-supervised and, by using them, Big Law is jeopardizing its clients daily.
Thank you!
Sincerely,
Your Name
"I borrowed this from another scam blogger" you seem to do that a lot
ReplyDeleteHa. Maybe I do. But I like to put my own spin on it. Stop hating.
ReplyDeleteI felt compelled to respond, too, for what little good it might do:
ReplyDeleteI have been a small firm or solo practitioner for my whole 8 years of practice, and generally speaking I am horrified by the concept of legal process outsourcing.
To try to answer your questions, I have outsourced work to other *local* attorneys and firms when I was overwhelmed with work, when I needed particular expertise beyond my own, and when I needed assistance with tasks such as document review and brief preparation. I have never outsourced legal work outside of my own community. I have outsourced in the early stages of representation (research into a particular claim), during discovery (document review, etc.), and in trial preparation (consulting re: jury trial preparation). The idea of outsourcing always came from me, in recognition that there were certain things I could not do alone. I discuss the possibility of outsourcing some work to other attorneys with my clients at the beginning of representation, with the understanding that I maintain discretion to select an outsourced attorney, but that under no circumstances will I charge the client a higher rate than my own for another attorney’s work. I have chosen the handful of attorneys to whom I have outsourced work based exclusively on personal relationships and reputation.
My experience with outsourcing has been a mixed bag. I have outsourced research on a simple legal claim in an area outside of my comfort zone, only to receive a generic and unhelpful answer with a bill for $1,000, and I have had experiences that were as good as the one described was bad. The bottom line is that, by outsourcing legal work, I give up control over time and costs, and I generally find the result unacceptable for my clients.
Now then, the idea of outsourcing legal process work overseas horrifies me for the following reasons:
1. Legal work, a highly specialized and personalized profession, is being sent thousands of miles away to persons who did not attend ABA-accredited schools, did not take any particular state’s bar exam, and did not take the MPRE. It depersonalizes the profession and it opens up a Pandora’s box of ethics risk. If I feel a loss of control by outsourcing within the same city, you’re talking about sending work to other continents.
2. Persons practicing legal work overseas are outside the jurisdiction of both professional rules of discipline and criminal law on the state and federal level. It is only a matter of time before someone practicing overseas engages in insider trading, converts client assets, or misuses privileged client information. When that happens, the lawyers here in the U.S. will be left holding the bag.
3. The ABA and law schools all over the country are still encouraging law school enrollment at higher and higher rates. Actively encouraging outsourcing leaves an increasingly population of unemployed, and unemployable, new lawyers. I have practiced on a self-employed basis for my entire career, but I am not blind to the building crisis of overqualified and underemployed lawyers in this country.
In summary, it is not accurate to say that legal process outsourcing is a minefield. A better analogy is a room full of exposed mines, with lawyers and big firms foolishly tapping on the triggers.