Attorney jobs increasingly outsourced to India

[stateofbeasley]

I saw this posted on a legal blog last week:

MSNBC report

Most law schools were a scam 5 years ago, and they are even more of scam today. New law graduates entering the work force are now competing for entry-level work with Indians who will do the same job at a fraction of the cost.

A US law graduate must pay for the following in order to practice law:
- 4 year bachelor's degree
- 3 year Juris Doctor degree
- Pass a state bar examination
- Pay yearly licensing fees
- Complete continuing legal education credits yearly

An Indian attorney has the following U.S. requirements: NONE. No state license, no degree from US accredited school, no licensing fees.

Imagine borrowing $150,000 of non-dischargeable student debt, passing the bar, and then having your job taken by an Indian attorney in Mumbai who practices law over an Internet connection.

Most law schools are nothing but diploma mills. Their students will largely be steamrolled by globalization.

Some people will be able to find jobs in local litigation matters, but you only need so many attorneys to handle personal injury, criminal defense, and family law matters. The yellow pages are riddled with advertisements from local attorneys grasping for any client who will pay some $ upfront.

 

[Red Irish]

What do you suggest, that the US apply free market economic practices to everything except the appointment of legal representatives? Perhaps people who need an attorney will be happier to pay less.

 

[bobsmith1492]

This can be a good thing; US students will be forced to find better careers that are more productive for society.

 

[Slew Foot]

I still have yet to personally find a lawyer who makes less than 150K. My brother in law made partner last year and pulls in nearly 500K.

 

[Phokus]

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492
This can be a good thing; US students will be forced to find better careers that are more productive for society.

WHAT careers?

Seems like they're trying to outsource EVERYTTHING. First manufacturing, then software engineering, now lawyers. Even some medical professions are being outsourced (I.e. radiology).

edit: oh yeah and i've witnessed lots of outsourcing of accountants/financial professionals as well.

 

[Phokus]

Originally posted by: Slew Foot
I still have yet to personally find a lawyer who makes less than 150K. My brother in law made partner last year and pulls in nearly 500K.

my friend who graduated from Boston University was pulling down 43K several years ago and got laid off. This was at a small private firm. Government lawyers get around 50k starting, i believe.

Not all lawyers are mr. moneybags

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: Slew Foot
I still have yet to personally find a lawyer who makes less than 150K.

All of the lawyers that I know do well. Several lawyers in my extended family.

Heck, my Grandfather loves his job so much that he has slapped lawsuits on Office Depot, AT&T / Bell South, etc. over "small" amounts because he hates them and wants to annoy them. His stated objective is to make them spend more defending themselves than the amount they owe him. While we share common enemies, I do not think it is worth his time, but if that is his entertainment / vengeance, then have at it.

 

[EagleKeeper]

No matter where you get a degree, unless you pass the bar for a given state, you are not allowed to practice within that state infront of a court.

What it seems:
You have is contract type law handling/paperwork that is being outsourced.
The papework is being reviewd, analyzed for large corporations that would normally have legal AIDES handling verification.

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: Phokus

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492
This can be a good thing; US students will be forced to find better careers that are more productive for society.

WHAT careers?

Seems like they're trying to outsource EVERYTTHING. First manufacturing, then software engineering, now lawyers. Even some medical professions are being outsourced (I.e. radiology).

edit: oh yeah and i've witnessed lots of outsourcing of accountants/financial professionals as well.

Don't forget the Wendy's drive through order taker (yes, it's true).

 

[marvdmartian]

So does this mean we can sell licenses and have a hunting season for lawyers now??

Sadly, I'd bet we churn out more lawyers per year than we do doctors.

 

[Siddhartha]

Originally posted by: stateofbeasley
I saw this posted on a legal blog last week:

MSNBC report

Most law schools were a scam 5 years ago, and they are even more of scam today. New law graduates entering the work force are now competing for entry-level work with Indians who will do the same job at a fraction of the cost.

A US law graduate must pay for the following in order to practice law:
- 4 year bachelor's degree
- 3 year Juris Doctor degree
- Pass a state bar examination
- Pay yearly licensing fees
- Complete continuing legal education credits yearly

An Indian attorney has the following U.S. requirements: NONE. No state license, no degree from US accredited school, no licensing fees.

Imagine borrowing $150,000 of non-dischargeable student debt, passing the bar, and then having your job taken by an Indian attorney in Mumbai who practices law over an Internet connection.

Most law schools are nothing but diploma mills. Their students will largely be steamrolled by globalization.

Some people will be able to find jobs in local litigation matters, but you only need so many attorneys to handle personal injury, criminal defense, and family law matters. The yellow pages are riddled with advertisements from local attorneys grasping for any client who will pay some $ upfront.

I predict that in a year there will be a law on the CT books making it difficult to outsource lawyer jobs.

 

[0marTheZealot]

Originally posted by: marvdmartian
So does this mean we can sell licenses and have a hunting season for lawyers now??

Sadly, I'd bet we churn out more lawyers per year than we do doctors.

oh by far. Becoming a Doctor is no joke, you need to be pretty damn smart. Plus, it's an extra 6-8 years of committment after a 4 year undergraduate degree. During the residency, you get paid shit and get treated like shit. It's not uncommon for residents to work 100+ hours a week and pull barely 40k.

I say this is a good thing, anything to discourage people from going to law school is a good thing. We have absolutely way too many lawyers nowadays. The US is the most litigious society in the world.

 

[daniel49]

I thought most of them went into politics now.

 

[Atreus21]

Comparative advantage.

 

[Phokus]

As for lawyer salaries, it depends on what type of law you practice and how large the firm:

Q: Do attorneys really make all that money I hear about?

A: Depends. Some do, most don't. Here's a sampling of several kinds of legal work--there are other fields, and these numbers are not set in stone. (All numbers may vary depending on geographic location and the state of the economy.)

* Lawyers who go into private practice at a big firm will often have starting salaries between $100,000 - $160,000; as partners (6+ years of seniority), they can make three to ten times that amount. They may also work 100 hour work weeks, become permanently angry and tired, and so forth--it's not a walk in the park. (More in the "Career" FAQs below.)
* Government lawyers (including criminal prosecutors) "only" make between $40,000 - $90,000, but receive excellent benefits. They may work anywhere from 35 - 80 hours per week, depending on caseload and big projects.
* Public service lawyers make between $30,000 - $50,000 -- these are the folks who may represent poor clients, and people who work for organizations like the ACLU or NAACP or Southern PovLaw. Bad pay, clear conscience.
* Personal injury lawyers ("Call 1-866-ACCIDENTES") can make from low $30K to six-figures, depending on seniority, experience, and client base.
* In-house counsel (lawyers who work as permanent staff members of corporations, such as the RIAA or Microsoft, etc.) can make anywhere from $60K - medium six figures, depending on experience, area of expertise, size of the company, etc.

Further, lawyers have an EXTREMELY bimodal salary range - the median sounds OK, but looking at the graph it is clear that the median means absolutely jack.


http://forums.somethingawful.c...d.php?threadid=3077610

 

[stateofbeasley]

Originally posted by: Red Irish

What do you suggest, that the US apply free market economic practices to everything except the appointment of legal representatives? Perhaps people who need an attorney will be happier to pay less.

Let me explain. What is going on is NOT a free market.

What is going on is that there are 2 sets of rules:

(1) Americans have to pay for 7 years of education in the US, take a state bar exam, and pay fees to practice law.

(2) Indians don't have any of these requirements to practice law in the US.

How is this a free market when one set of parties is subject to lots of requirements and regulations, while another set of parties can do whatever they want for the same job?

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Heck, my Grandfather loves his job so much that he has slapped lawsuits on Office Depot, AT&T / Bell South, etc. over "small" amounts because he hates them and wants to annoy them. His stated objective is to make them spend more defending themselves than the amount they owe him. While we share common enemies, I do not think it is worth his time, but if that is his entertainment / vengeance, then have at it.

This is exactly why there needs to be tort reform and fewer lawyers. It is well known that trial attorneys love Philadelphia (where I went to law school) because juries there will give out big awards for bullshit cases.

Originally posted by: Slew Foot
I still have yet to personally find a lawyer who makes less than

Your view of the legal profession is almost certainly of large firm employees and partners.

The full national picture of employment is much much different:

Natl. Association for Legal Career Professionals data

Note the bi-modal distribution. You have people in the six figure range, and a TON of people in the 35k-55k range. And this only accounts for people who reported what they were earning. There are tons of people who are unemployed or have uncertain earnings because they do work on a contractual basis.

The big firms ran up rates and salaries when the economy was good. Now that everything has gone to hell, a lot of ex-biglaw associates are going to get a taste of life at the bottom of the barrel.

 

[stateofbeasley]

NYTimes: Downturn Dims Prospects Even at Top Law Schools

This guy goes to a top-ranked law program at NYU:

After he lost his job as a television reporter two years ago, Derek Fanciullo considered law school, thinking it was a historically sure bet. He took out ?a ferocious amount of debt,? he said ? $210,000, to be exact ? and enrolled last September in the School of Law at New York University.

?It was thought to be this green pasture of stability, a more comfortable life,? said Mr. Fanciullo, who had heard that 90 percent of N.Y.U. law graduates land jobs at firms, and counted on that to repay his loans. ?It was almost written in stone that you?ll end up in a law firm, almost like a birthright.?

The sense of entitlement makes me want to become a conservative.

On a recent Friday afternoon, Mr. Fanciullo sat at home waiting anxiously for his first callback after four days of interviews. Firms customarily called within 48 hours, he explained.

?You almost bank on the big firms hiring you because they?re really the only ones who can help you pay your debt,? he said, his mind already skipping forward to a situation he didn?t choose to articulate. ?Quite frankly it would be an absolute disaster. I don?t know what I?d do.?

The stakes are extremely high.

If this guy gets a biglaw job, he can escape his debt. If he fails, he's stuck with a mortgage-sized loan that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.

Even officials at Harvard are extremely concerned:

It has been a bizarre new reality, especially for elite schools. At Harvard, officials have had to hawk résumés or tell students, quite simply, to buck up. (?Now is not the time for avoidance, denial or panic,? Mark Weber, the assistant dean of career services, wrote in a March memo to Harvard Law?s graduating class.)

Meanwhile, Indian attorneys are doing the work that was once the province of entry-level associates.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Originally posted by: stateofbeasley
NYTimes: Downturn Dims Prospects Even at Top Law Schools

This guy goes to a top-ranked law program at NYU:

After he lost his job as a television reporter two years ago, Derek Fanciullo considered law school, thinking it was a historically sure bet. He took out ?a ferocious amount of debt,? he said ? $210,000, to be exact ? and enrolled last September in the School of Law at New York University.

?It was thought to be this green pasture of stability, a more comfortable life,? said Mr. Fanciullo, who had heard that 90 percent of N.Y.U. law graduates land jobs at firms, and counted on that to repay his loans. ?It was almost written in stone that you?ll end up in a law firm, almost like a birthright.?

The sense of entitlement makes me want to become a conservative.

On a recent Friday afternoon, Mr. Fanciullo sat at home waiting anxiously for his first callback after four days of interviews. Firms customarily called within 48 hours, he explained.

?You almost bank on the big firms hiring you because they?re really the only ones who can help you pay your debt,? he said, his mind already skipping forward to a situation he didn?t choose to articulate. ?Quite frankly it would be an absolute disaster. I don?t know what I?d do.?

The stakes are extremely high.

If this guy gets a biglaw job, he can escape his debt. If he fails, he's stuck with a mortgage-sized loan that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.

Even officials at Harvard are extremely concerned:

It has been a bizarre new reality, especially for elite schools. At Harvard, officials have had to hawk résumés or tell students, quite simply, to buck up. (?Now is not the time for avoidance, denial or panic,? Mark Weber, the assistant dean of career services, wrote in a March memo to Harvard Law?s graduating class.)

Meanwhile, Indian attorneys are doing the work that was once the province of entry-level associates.

Well, nothing in life is guaranteed. People who take out this enormous debt in school loans are taking a risk no matter what profession they are choosing.

I'm not really sure what the point to your post is -- this is happening to many different professions and many of the replacements have dubious qualifications as well. I don't think lawyers deserve any special protection from this happening to their profession unless you extend similar protections to engineers, etc.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492
This can be a good thing; US students will be forced to find better careers that are more productive for society.

Such as?

Law is one of the three traditional professional fields along with being an MBA or a physician. What people are missing is that this is one of those high-fallutin' knowledge-based fields people are supposed to retrain and re-educate for. This is a field that, traditionally, served as a ladder for people to climb into middle class and upper middle class prosperity.

The article Beasley linked to is just more evidence of the decreasing value of a college education in the United States. Also, the legal profession isn't the only college-education-requiring knowledge-based field suffering from global labor arbitrage like this. Middle class manufacturing jobs in this country are going the way of the dodo bird, but know we're finding out that college-education-requiring careers are following the same path. The big difference is that if you lose your blue collar job, you haven't lost the value of any formal education you paid for. In contrast, if you lose your white collar job (and career), you have lost the value of years of college education and in some cases six figures worth of monetary expenditure.

People also need to remember that if highly educated lawyers end up unemployed or underemployed, they will retrain or attempt to enter other fields, increasing competition for people in other fields. So, be careful what you wish for--because some of these people might be offering to do your job one day for half your wages.

This also raises the issue of whether we have too much college education in this country. Does a large portion of it constitute economic waste? Is it time to begin reducing the number of colleges and universities and the number of seats in them?

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper
This also raises the issue of whether we have too much college education in this country. Does a large portion of it constitute economic waste? Is it time to begin reducing the number of colleges and universities and the number of seats in them?

That is a good point, along with maybe tightening up the requirements for admission to some of these programs.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally posted by: Slew Foot
I still have yet to personally find a lawyer who makes less than 150K. My brother in law made partner last year and pulls in nearly 500K.

This reminds me of the well-to-do physician who says, "I should have become an MBA; all the MBAs I know are rich."

Thing is, when you're a member of the upper middle class or upper class as you would be as a physician, the people you meet also tend to be members of that class, which makes the pool of people you meet very self-selecting. You only get to meet the successful MBAs and lawyers, the ones who can afford to live in your neighborhood and hobnob with other well-to-do people. In contrast, you don't get to meet the down-on-his-luck unemployed or underemployed MBA who manages a shoe store or the lawyer who struggles to make $30,000/year doing occasional public defender work.

 

[Greenman]

When all the manufacturing jobs went overseas no one cared. When all the service/support jobs went overseas no one cared. When all of the hospitals started hiring Indian doctors, no one cared. So why should anyone care about lawyers? I wish they would move all the law schools overseas as well, let the parasites ruin some other country.

 

[Engineer]

Good ole Steve Forbes probably loves this. He also suggests that the way to cure health care costs in this country is to offshore treatment to countries like India. Stated that you could have a surgery that would cost $150,000 in the US for around $6,000, including airline tickets, in India.

Welcome to McDonalds...would you like a checkup with your fries? I'm a doctor as well as your order taker (thick India voice)!

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally posted by: Phokus
As for lawyer salaries, it depends on what type of law you practice and how large the firm:

You also need to take into account that a great many of them will never practice law at all since many will be unable to enter the profession after law school, having been unable to find legal jobs, and end up being unemployable as lawyers, losing the value of their legal education. You might say that they earn $0/year as attorneys.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally posted by: stateofbeasley
NYTimes: Downturn Dims Prospects Even at Top Law Schools

This guy goes to a top-ranked law program at NYU:

After he lost his job as a television reporter two years ago, Derek Fanciullo considered law school, thinking it was a historically sure bet. He took out ?a ferocious amount of debt,? he said ? $210,000, to be exact ? and enrolled last September in the School of Law at New York University.

?It was thought to be this green pasture of stability, a more comfortable life,? said Mr. Fanciullo, who had heard that 90 percent of N.Y.U. law graduates land jobs at firms, and counted on that to repay his loans. ?It was almost written in stone that you?ll end up in a law firm, almost like a birthright.?

The sense of entitlement makes me want to become a conservative.

It's easy for laymen to condemn him, but if we put ourselves in his shoes, why wouldn't he have a sense of entitlement? He just spent gazillions of dollars and huge amounts of time and effort to earn a professional degree--7 years worth of college education. Why should he not reasonably expect to find a solid middle class job if not an upper middle class job? Also, most people in our society do believe that professional degrees are a guarantor of at least solid middle class if not upper middle class prosperity. (Just open any newspaper or turn on the radio or TV; it's hard to do that without hearing about how we need more and better college education and how people will be able to find great jobs with more education.) These views were formed based on data from the Fifties and Sixties when that rule did hold true. You can see it evident in what he said, "historically good bet."

The stakes are extremely high.

If this guy gets a biglaw job, he can escape his debt. If he fails, he's stuck with a mortgage-sized loan that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.

If he fails to land an at least solid middle class position, then his life could be fucked up for decades, especially if he has over $100,000 in debt. (Given the cost of undergraduate and law school tuition today, the later of which has become completely insane ($47,000/year at some places and not only at the top schools), coming out with well over $100,000 is not out of the question and might even be probable.)

Just what are we supposed to do with these people who will essentially end up as slaves to their student loan creditors? It's almost as though they will end up living in debtors' prisons without walls--because they adhered to society's dogma about higher education and tried to better themselves--not because they are worthless bums.