Pinsents – first firm to offshore work of qualified UK lawyers
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National firm to outsource litigation work to South Africa as offshoring revolution gathers pace
Pinsent Masons is gearing up to make significant cost savings by outsourcing work to South Africa, becoming the first firm to offshore the work of qualified lawyers.
Pinsents is outsourcing litigation work to lawyers working for business services company Exigent in South Africa.
A dedicated team of lawyers based in Cape Town will carry out tasks including first reviews of documentation on UK and US-related investigations at around a 50 per cent saving on each role.
Pinsents head of dispute resolution and litigation Nigel Kissack said: “Does it need some of the best brains in Britain to do that work? We wanted to offer an alternative to our clients – it’s the same work and the same quality, but at a lower cost.”
The move comes after mining company Rio Tinto signed a deal to outsource legal work to India (The Lawyer.com, 18 June).
Firms such as Allen & Overy are also thought to be considering outsourcing certain aspects of litigation work to dedicated teams.
Simmons & Simmons is looking to use external lawyers overseas for large pieces of litigation or corporate due diligence, with the aim of achieving a 50 per cent cost saving on each role that is moved offshore, but the plans have yet to be implemented.
There is some scepticism in the market about offshoring legal work. Norton Rose global head of dispute resolution Antony Dutton said people unfamiliar with a case may not be able to spot “smoking guns” in documents, but Kissack said he was confident about the quality of the lawyers chosen by Exigent.
“Physical separation and systems separation are already achieved. These guys are accredited lawyers and will be subject to our supervision,” he insisted.
While other firms have outsourced non-legal work for some time - Pinsents has farmed out typing work to Exigent since 2007, while Clifford Chance has cut millions from its cost base by outsourcing IT and paralegal work to India - Eversheds is understood to be planning the most wide-reaching non-legal outsourcing project in the market.
As reported by The Lawyer last month (25 May), the firm is piloting a secretarial outsourcing programme in its Cambridge office. The scheme, which begins this week, is due to last for one month, and if successful it will be rolled out across the firm.
During the pilot 10 secretarial staff have been put on paid leave. It is thought that up to 10 of the 30-strong secretarial team in Cambridge will be made redundant if the pilot proves successful.
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Readers' comments (39)
Anonymous | 22-Jun-2009 3:00 pm
This is so depressing. Does it need to be done by the best legal brains in Britain? No. It needs to be the trainees and NQs that are learning and developing to become the best legal brains of the future.
Pinsents should be ashamed to be among the vanguard of the "low cost low quality" revolution in legal services.
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Anonymous | 22-Jun-2009 4:00 pm
I totally agree with the first comment.
Clients should understand that today's best legal brains were yesterday's trainees and NQs learning the job by doing first reviews etc.
It is up to law firms to come with an acceptable fee they can bill for this kind of work, but saving costs by outsourcing is not the right way.
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Anonymous | 22-Jun-2009 4:15 pm
If lawyers (collectively) hadn't been so greedy, and expected such high salaries, this never would have happened. They assumed no one would complete with them for work, and pushed wages up to unsustainable levels accordingly.
Well, wake up a smell the coffee. If a lawyer – or a member of support staff - is not doing reserved work, or work that can only be handled on-site, they have no USP.
I'm sure there were textile workers, or furniture makers would thought that clients would care about their profession, and wouldn't let their livelihoods be outsourced. Well, it turns out that clients only really care about price, once basic quality standards have been met.
If you’ve ever bought a cabinet manufactured China, or clothes made in India, then you really have no right to complain when your own profession becomes globalised.
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Anonymous | 22-Jun-2009 4:20 pm
As an ex-Pinsents assistant, I can say that nothing they do surprises me. I don't think it will benefit them in the long run though. This shows what they think of litigation lawyers!
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Anonymous | 22-Jun-2009 4:49 pm
Anonymous at 4:15 says it all. The first two postings are truly astonishing in their myopia. Lawyers (especially from London) benefitted massively from globalization. Here comes the next phase. Deal with it or stop buying mangoes, Australian wine, Calvin Kleins or putting your money in a UK bank.
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Anonymous | 22-Jun-2009 5:03 pm
Since when was the adverb or adjective "offshore" a verb?
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Anonymous | 22-Jun-2009 5:12 pm
I suppose when morons like 415 and 449 abound in the UK it's no wonder that firms are looking to outsource.
Do you really think that "clients" want savings at any cost? The problem is that when greedy managers get into full flow, clients end up being unable to find quality anywhere and have to settle for low cost. Look at shoe shops. Twenty years ago you could buy quality shoes for a moderate price. Now, you can spend £20 or blow £200 and either way the things still fall apart because they are all made in the same unskilled, sweat labour conditions.
And the export of goods is completely unrelated to the outsourcing of services provided by UK firms. Does the sale of Australian wine here put Australians out of work or force them to work for slave wages? No! Quite the opposite.
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Anonymous | 22-Jun-2009 5:14 pm
And instead of making catty, embittered remarks perhaps you could constructively suggest how ordinary people on ordinary wages in the UK (which, by the way, includes most lawyers) are supposed to survive and thrive in their profession?
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Rob Barklamb | 22-Jun-2009 5:25 pm
I agree with the poster of 4:15pm. Like it or not, this sort of move is inevitable and irresistable. Clients will seek to drive down costs and offshoring (sorry to use it as a verb, 5:03pm) is a sure way of reducing costs without making unacceptablle sacrifices in quality. Whilst it may indeed protect PEP, it is ultimately client driven. The only surprise is that it has taken so long for the Legal profession to make this sort of move. Thomas Friedman's book "The World is Flat" charts the progress of offshoring, outsourcing, in - sourcing et al. Its first overview chapter is called "While I was Sleeping". Those who can't recognise that this march is the same as those which have hit other professions and industries, as 4:15 describes, are still sleeping. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm saying it is client driven and it is a fact.
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Anonymous | 22-Jun-2009 5:46 pm
Those who crow about how "obvious" it is as a development may be right but I think they are idiots to speak as though EVERYone didn't see it coming; of course we did but that doesn't remove our right to complain about it.
It WILL result in unacceptable drops in quality. Being unable to communicate properly with the people doing the work offshore will lead to the same frustration, errors and delays that arose when the callcentre industry started outsourcing.
It's a very sad development for UK employees and UK clients. I only hope that the regions are protected from this to an extent, since personal relationships are so much more important and deals generally smaller.
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