CC promotes support staff from India to associate
Clifford Chance has taken the unprecedented step of hiring two lawyers from its Indian legal support centre as associates in the LLP.
One will join the Abu Dhabi capital markets team and the other the London banking team. Both will join at the equivalent level of a newly qualified lawyer.
The duo work in the firm’s Delhi Knowledge Centre, a wholly owned subsidiary of Clifford Chance that carries out quasi-paralegal work, including document review, contract drafting, research and due diligence.
Knowledge Centre director Mark Ford said: “They’re very capable lawyers; they’ve impressed us with their work and we wanted to offer them a career development step. They were keen to take on a practising role - it was either that or in all likelihood they would have gone somewhere else.”
Ford emphasised that the offshore centre is totally separate from the firm and was not “a conveyor belt into Clifford Chance - it’s a separate function”.
The firm has operated a captive offshore entity since 2007.
Last week Allen & Overy became the first magic circle firm to outsource litigation work offshore (TheLawyer. com, 18 November).
Readers' comments (6)
Anonymous | 23-Nov-2009 1:58 pm
Oh, my, let's ship some more jobs out of the USA. Now who's making us a third-rate nation?
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Wondering | 23-Nov-2009 9:09 pm
What is "quasi-paralegal" work?
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Anonymous | 24-Nov-2009 6:56 am
Anon @ 1:58 pm, how does an English law firm sending two lawyers from India to Abu Dhabi and London have anything to do with "ship[ping] ... jobs out of the USA"??! It does not seem that the English are the ones making the USA a third rate nation, if it is one.
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Anonymous | 24-Nov-2009 10:56 pm
"One will join the Abu Dhabi capital markets team and the other the London banking team. Both will join at the equivalent level of a newly qualified lawyer."
Wait, so they have made the India 'support staff' two NQ offers?
This will be awkard to explain to the London NQs who didn't get offers 2 months ago...
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Anonymous | 25-Nov-2009 5:16 pm
Purely a PR stunt.
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Anonymous | 27-Nov-2009 1:30 pm
Welcome to the real world people. CC has simply acquired two very good junior lawyers who have skills, abilities and experience which mean they are worth recruiting. Why should the London NQ who wasn't offered a job be preferred over, let alone compared with, them?
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