[For related on-going commentary, see the Outsourcing category of the Strategic Legal Technology blog.]

Outsourced Legal Services – Introduction and Explanation

This list of selected legal outsourcing activity was compiled and is maintained by Joy London, co-editor of Law Librarian News / excited utterances, a global electronic newsletter for law librarians and legal knowledge managers (for subscription information, e-mail Joy London) and Ron Friedmann, President of Prism Legal Consulting, Inc and author of the blog Strategic Legal Technology.

To clarify terminology, outsourcing refers to using any third party to provide services previously provided by full-time employees; offshoring refers to outsourcing to a non-domestic provider; insourcing refers to shifting work to an owned-and-operated facility that is centralized and physically separate from the rest of the organization.

In 2005, we observed a trend by US law firms and law departments to offshore legal work. We consolidated our observations into this list. We invite readers to send updates, corrections, and comments.

Our list focuses on offshoring by US and UK law firms and departments of certain substantive and administrative legal functions, specifically

• Document drafting by lawyers
• Legal research
• IP legal work, substantive or administrative
• Review of discovery documents
• Paralegal services
• Administrative and secretarial support services, excluding digital dictation

We do not include offshore litigation support (coding or EED) or vendor-provided technology services. Nor do we include offshore vendors without a specific legal focus. We also cover selected insourcing and domestic outsourcing.

Our inclusion criteria are loose but exclude outsourcing to US-based vendors of technology support, legal research, and copy/mail-room services, which has occurred for years and is thus of less interest to us.

Our list is neither complete nor comprehensive. We assemble it based on web research, articles we read, people we meet, and e-mail messages we receive. Each entry includes a source. Where the source is a web site, we list the URL, the date we added the site to the list, and the date we last checked the web site. Where the source is an article, we provide a citation; we have no way to track possible changes since the publication date.

Our list consists of several tables: vendors that provide LPO services, companies that we believe outsource or offshore legal work, law firms that we believe outsource or offshore work, and organizations previously listed that no longer appear involved in LPO (or appear to be out of business or were acquired).

We welcome comments, suggestions, and corrections from readers. We reserve the right to post reader comments at excited utterances and/or Strategic Legal Technology unless requested otherwise. We will include selected suggestions that we receive in periodic updates.

Updates: 2/24/08; 8/19/07; 5/15/07 [compiled from 4/8/07 to 5/14/07);
1/9/07; 10/23/06; 7/15/06; 6/25/06; 12/27/05; 8/29/05; 5/15/05
New additions since last update have dates bolded
Originally Posted: April 12, 2005

Vendors Providing Offshored or Outsourced Legal Services (111 Listed )

Corporations Offshoring Legal Work (Based on Published Articles)

Law Firms Offshoring Legal Work (Based on Published Sources)

Apparently No Longer Offering Legal Services or Not in Business or Acquired
(Based on

Visit to Original Web Address on Date “Dropped”)