Roundup (5/10/08): Offshore savings, Biz Training for Lawyers, EDD Convergence, and Open Source Law

In this Roundup, cost savings from offshore document review, b-school training for lawyers, EDD convergence, and an example of open source law. 

Offshore Document Review
Tusker outsources to India; $25 an hour for an attorney (Austin Business Journal, 18 April 2008) reports on an offshore document review that saved between 80% and 90% relative to the cost of an onshore review. These savings enabled a small company to take on Dell Inc.

Law Firm Leadership Training Spreads
Over the last few years, numerous national law firms have partnered with leading business schools to provide business training. This trend appears to be moving beyond major metro areas. Columbus law firm joins forces with OSU to create leadership course (Columbus Business First, 11 April 2008) reports that Ohio State University has “customized [a] new leadership development program” for Bricker & Eckler.

E-Discovery Convergence
Information Week (21 April 2006) reports in Oracle’s E-mail Organizer that “Oracle is moving into e-mail archiving [which] let IT managers organize, archive, and search e-mail from Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes, and SMTP-based e-mail systems.” [See also Oracle Universal Online Archive.] With this type of functionality, corporations should be able significantly to reduce e-discovery collection and processing costs.

Open Source Law
I recently learned about The Online Compliance Consortium in the article Online AML Compliance in Managing Partner (March 2008). The OCC web site home page states “The purpose of the OCC is to help establish best practice and standards for larger law firms in the arena of compliance and specifically compliance training. Founded in 2004 through the collaboration of 14 of the UK’s leading law firms the Online Compliance Consortium has now grown to include over 70 the world’s largest law firms.” The article suggests that the group was formed by leading law firms to “share their experiences and concerns to create a common standard and a portfolio of training programmes for compliance.” Sounds like open source law.