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shoes made. He insists the workmanship can't be matched in the United States, nor can the price. "These are the most comfortable shoes I've ever worn," he said of a pair of leather loafers he had on...


shoes made. He insists the workmanship can't be matched in the United States, nor can the price. "These are


the most comfortable shoes I've ever worn," he said of a pair of leather loafers he had on recently.


Steinberg, who was standing in his office in Noida Cheap Gerald McCoy Jersey , a high-tech suburb of New Delhi, is not in the shoe


business. He believes he's found another product that can be made in India at high quality and low cost: legal


services. His 1 12-year-old company, Intellevate, specializes in intellectual property work. Its staff, about


one-fifth of them lawyers, prepares patent applications and conducts technical research on intellectual


property questions. Among its clients are the legal departments of Fortune 500 companies.


The market for outsourced legal work is expected to reach $163 billion by next year Cheap Mike Evans Jersey , and India is positioned


to seize the largest share. The time difference between India and the United States allows for work to be done


overnight, and many people in India's enormous workforce are college-educated and English-speaking.


Intellevate recently placed a want ad for a patent researcher in the Times of India, the leading


English-language daily. The company received 1,700 résumés. "There are 200 million English-speaking,


college-educated Indians and there are not 200 million jobs," Steinberg said. Such a disparity in supply and


demand allows his company to hire credentialed Cheap Jameis Winston Jersey , capable labor, cheaply. "We're not selling shoes," Steinberg


likes to say. "We're selling cobblers."


Puneet Mohey, president of a legal outsourcing company called Lexadigm on the other side of town, has a more


straightforward pitch: "We provide large-law-firm-quality work at literally one-third the price." Lexadigm's


rates range from $65 to $95 an hour for work that large U.S. firms might bill at $250 an hour or more. Nearly


all the employees at Mohey's company are lawyers.


With outsourcing, those who are not members of an American bar are supervised Cheap Matt Gay Jersey , and their work vouched for, by


someone who is. "To the extent that what you have them do is legal research for U.S. firms, it's not much


different than having law students do it," said George Washington University Law School professor Thomas


Morgan, a scholar of professional responsibility.


Some of the dozen or so outsourcing companies that have sprung up over the last decade in India focus on


low-level paralegal work?keeping track of filing dates and document reviews. But Intellevate and Lexadigm


prefer to take on more sophisticated work like patent applications and appellate briefs because the work


commands higher rates from clients. Lexadigm recently drafted its first brief for a U.S. Supreme Court case,


involving the application to a tax dispute of the Fifth Amendment's due process clause. The brief will


ultimately be filed by an American law firm Cheap Anthony Nelson Jersey , which can use all, part, or none of Lexadigm's work?the same as


if the draft had been written by one of its own associates.


With the work being done in India becoming more sophisticated, some American attorneys are skeptical of


American firms that use outsourced legal services. "I think a lawyer has a responsibility over his work and he


just can't delegate it," said former ABA president Jerome Shestack, now the head of litigation at the


Philadelphia firm of Wolf Cheap Mike Edwards Jersey , Block, Schorr and Solis-Cohen. "The problem with outsourcing is, how do you keep


control over it? How do you see how it's being done?"


OUTSOURCING LEGAL WORK TO INDIA began in 1995, when the 34-lawyer, Dallas-based litigation firm of Bickel &


Brewer opened an office in Hyderabad. Co-founder and co-managing partner Bill Brewer, who is 53 years old Cheap Jamel Dean Jersey ,


explained that the idea was hatched when he was out to brunch with a relation by marriage. The relative, C. S.


Prasada Rao, was originally from India. "We were looking for new ways to be more efficient in handling the


millions of pieces of information that confront us in each case. I'm not sure how it came out of the


conversation but somewhere a light went off. I asked, 'You can have a lawyer for how much an hour in India?'


He said, 'Two dollars an hour.' We didn't make it to dinner before we were setting up the subsidiary in


India."


Bickel & Brewer has since spun off its Hyderabad office, run by Rao Cheap Sean Bunting Jersey , into a separate company called Imaging &


Abstract International, which handles work for Bickel & Brewer as well as other American clients. In 2001,


General Electric added a legal division to a currently existing base of operations in India to handle legal


compliance and research for two of its divisions, GE Plastics and GE Consumer Finance.