In this Roundup: a good Bloomberg article on legal outsourcing, ALM’s law librarian survey and related articles, “Making the Law Free,” and “good enough” technology.
Outsourcing
Bloomberg.com has a very good article by Cynthia Cotts and Liane Kufchock on legal outsourcing: Jones Day, Kirkland Send Work to India to Cut Costs. Pressure is building to reduce legal costs: “Clients are pushing law firms like Jones Day and Kirkland & Ellis to send basic legal tasks to India, where lawyers tag documents and investigate takeover targets for as little as $20 an hour.”
Law Librarian Survey
LawFirmInc published its survey of law libraries, Degree of Difficulty: 10 (July/Aug 2007, free registration required). The data and analysis in a series of related articles cover a wide range of topics, from the role of law librarians, to rising subscription costs, to the role of librarians in knowledge management.
Making the Law Free
I’ve always found it odd that, for the most part, finding US law means paying private companies for it. Those who’ve been in the market a while likely recall the copyright battle over West citations and pagination. Recently, “internet activist” Carl Malamud initiated a project to make US law free. The New York Times reported on this but I recommend starting with Bob Ambrogi’s blog post on the topic, Crashing the Wexis Gate (8/23/07); he references the Times article and provides his own analysis plus links to other useful references.
Good Enough Technology (Updated 8/26/07)
At some point I will permit myself a whining post on my Personal Productivity blog category about the challenges technology poses. Tempering that is an interesting commentary in Business Week (9/3/07 ), Why “Good Enough” Is Good Enough ($). Stephen Baker writes that, on balance, less than perfect technology (think cell phones dropping calls or Skype going down) is actually a good thing. “A marketplace that’s not hung up on fail-safe standards is open to risk and innovation, and drives down prices… It’s no longer whether we can afford a technology, but more often whether we can afford the disruption if and when it fails…. The upside of this sloppy status quo is enormous.”