Attorney Outsourcing

Recently, the Recorder reported that in-house legal departments are using more attorneys from countries with lower professional salaries, and that this trend could shift up to 8% of work overseas in the next decade.

Should this forecast be accurate, this will require more interaction during off-hours (due to time zone differences) and make it potentially more difficult and certainly most costly at times to exchange documents (due to higher faxing and overnight mail expenses when sending materials to other countries).

This scenario could make legal extranet systems even more valuable in the future. The ability to share information electronically, as well as the ability to make data available 24 x 7, is even more useful when workteams are dispersed across oceans and borders.