In-House Counsel

In 2005, what did law firms and law departments use offshore resources to accomplish?

By Rees Morrison

A survey of 200 attorneys in 2005, ?from the largest law firms and corporations in the United States and Canada,? asked about offshore services. Robert Half Legal?s Future Law Office report, ?Client Service: Challenges and Strategies,? at 14, gave the percentages who selected one or more of six services.

Litigation support (60% selected it)

Patent development and filing (45%)

Legal research (40%)

Document review or coding (35%)

Billing (5%)

Other circumstances (30%)

A few days ago (See my post of Jan. 16, 2009: survey data on outsourcing services.), I posted more recent survey data on the same topic. Neither data source is robust enough to draw much in the way of conclusions, but legal research and patent work were high on both. The newer survey suggests a rapid rise in contract-related services and that litigation support/document review has shrunk as a portion of the total amount of work.

Full post as published by Law Department Management on January 22, 2009 (boomark / email).