Kim Jong IL
I make no apology for returning once again to the subject of Legal Process Outsourcing or LPO as it is colloquially known. The phenomenon is also known as Legal Services Outsourcing or LSO, making both sound like performances from the Royal Albert Hall rather than the relatively new process of instructing foreign lawyers to carry out legal tasks in a different country for a fraction of the price you would pay in this country.
LPO/LSO appears to be pretty high on the agenda of managing partners of law firms and others at present, presumably because the notion that you can use lawyers offshore to carry out tasks for a fraction of the cost of your own lawyers within the jurisdiction is irresistible in these straitened times. I am not sure what the army of paralegals and others who would have been engaged on the various tasks in this country think about it; they are surely going to be out of work if outsourcing increases, but for present purposes, I propose to leave consideration of that aspect of LPOs to one side.
Continue reading ‘You are only Jong 1200 times’
In the June 24th edition of The Economist there appeared an article entitled “Passage to India”.
This was not a reference to the E M Forster story written in the 1920s, which uses the trial of Doctor Aziz accused of raping Adela Quested on a visit to the Marabar caves to produce a trenchant commentary on the sometimes awkward relations between India and the British Raj some quarter of a century before Independence. This was a story about the growth of legal outsourcing with a subsidiary strap line proclaiming “Companies and law firms are turning to India for cut price legal services”.
Much has been written recently about the growth of legal process outsourcing and in a piece entitled A cunning plan [7th April, 2010] I mentioned that, on the back of outsourcing legal work to Indian lawyers at CPA Global thereby saving 20% of its legal costs, Rio Tinto’s general counsel Leah Cooper had jumped ship to join CPA as its strategy director.
Continue reading ‘Technophobia alive and well and living offshore’
Now that the Government has told us what price is to be paid for the years of Labour profligacy and its impact on our incomes, our pensions, our taxes and our futures, it is hard to decide where to start.
Should it be the demand from Europe that George Osborne should let the Commission or the Finance Ministers or the cleaners at the Berlaymont Building see his prep in future (our Budget) before he delivers it to Parliament? By the way, did you know that the building which houses the Commission is in the Rue de la Loi, which roughly translated* means the rule of law? How cheeky is that?
Continue reading ‘Spanner in the candy jar’
History is a wonderful thing and I am constantly amazed at how much of it appears to be a matter of chance.
There are numerous examples. For instance, I have come across the attached piece published by the Education Forum. I reproduce it in full, typos and all!
A significant event marking the international relations of the 18th century was the 7-year war (1756-1763). The war established England’s position as the greatest colonial and naval power of the times and allowed Prussia, led by king Frederic the Great, to confirm its status as a great European military power. It is nonetheless common knowledge that despite the king’s energy and military prowess, there was a time when Prussia was on the point of giving in due to its enemies’ (Russia’s, more specifically) overwhelming superiority. In 1761, the new British cabinet, led by Bute, stopped the transfer of funds to the Prussians. Given the circumstances, Frederic the 2nd found himself no longer able of carrying on the war. He even gave serious thought to abdication. But then there came about what the king himself named “the miracle of the House of Branderburg”.
Continue reading ‘Leaving it to chance’
Autolycus, in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, is described as a roguish peddler, vagabond and pickpocket who steals the Clown’s purse, pilfers a lot, but ultimately helps the lovers Perdita and Florizel to escape. Autolycus describes himself as a “snapper up of unconsidered trifles” – a description that can be applied to me as I squirrel away bits and pieces of news, seemingly unimportant snatches of overheard conversations and random observations of what is going on around me, just in case they may prove useful at some later stage.
Continue reading ‘A snapper up of unconsidered trifles’
Which is the odd one out in the list below?
- There’s no place like ASDA
- You shop, we drop
- Your M&S
- Law firm goes public
- Buy one get one free – (BOGOF)
- Every little helps!
Like all good quiz questions, there is a catch. In fact, there is no odd one out.
They are all supermarket strap lines and while you may have thought the reference to the law firm was a clue that this one was the odd one out, it is in fact a nod in the direction of what has become known as Tesco Law and one possible effect of the Legal Services Act 2007 the provisions of which come into force in 2010 and 2011.
Continue reading ‘Supermarket Law’
If you are a political junkie, the past few weeks have been exhilarating. Messrs Cleese, Idle, Palin et al could not have made it up!
In a few short days, we have moved from a tired, outdated, enfeebled ragbag of New Labour politicians with nothing but sarcasm and invective to offer to the first peace time coalition containing a Liberal politician for almost 90 years.
Like it or not, the electorate clearly decided that while they wanted to be rid of the Prince of Darkness (aka Lord Rumba of Rio), Brown, Balls and Harperson, they were not prepared to give untrammelled power to Cameron, Hague and Kitten Heels. What is more, they also decided that Cleggy and Cable were not the answer either. All that talk in the debates about the new wonder of British politics resulted in a net loss of 5 seats! A plague on the old parties was rightly rejected by the electorate, not least because the Liberals have been around for considerably longer than the Labour Party!
Continue reading ‘And now for something completely different’
The 1970s was the decade we all like to forget. Amongst many dubious inventions, I have had reason to recall recently the TV series called Fantasy Island. The owner charged wealthy individuals $50,000 each to come to the island and live out their fantasies.
Pretty well all the fantasies were unlikely. I suppose that is what a fantasy is all about, but I thought the 70s were long since behind me until I learned the other day that a law firm had put in a bill for a piece of litigation amounting to £105 million!
Last year, I wrote a piece [King Charles I and the Twitterati, 27th October 2009] about the company involved in this case, Trafigura, although at the time I was more interested in the concept of the super injunction obtained by the company than costs.
Continue reading ‘Fantasy island’
I very much doubt that Ben Elton would find the contents of last week’s meeting of the Commercial Litigation Forum to be suitable material for an episode of Blackadder!
My brief report on the subjects raised was in my post last week entitled “Litigating in the 21st Century“. Many of you will be familiar with the themes of the final series of Blackadder with Edmund and Baldrick in the trenches with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry’s Melchett and the wonderful “Darling” back at base. The frivolity and sheer fun is overshadowed throughout by the grim awareness of what is going to happen and a realisation that, for all their silliness, the men in the trenches are about to go over the top.
Continue reading ‘A cunning plan’
Hunca Munca and Tom Thumb were two bad mice. Beatrix Potter conceived the story of how they both created mayhem in the dolls’ house belonging to Lucinda and Jane, while the dolls were out in their pram. When the little girl who owns the dolls’ house discovers the mess, she gets a doll dressed up as a policeman while her more practical nanny sets a mouse trap. The two bad mice have to atone for their naughtiness.
Now we have a report in The Lawyer [Russian Retribution, 31 March, 2010] that two of Russia’s wealthiest men are to face one another in Court in 2011 after lawyers acting for Roman Abramovich failed to persuade Mr Justice Colman to strike out claims by Boris Berezovsky that Abramovich used coercive tactics against his former business partner which Berezovsky alleges caused him billions of pounds in losses.
Continue reading ‘Of mice and men’
