Florida Bar plans legal outsourcing showcase

India-based legal process outsourcing (LPO) is high on the agenda for the Florida Bar Association, as the group prepares to hold a conference on the subject on Friday 14 November. Entitled Legal Process Outsourcing In India – What You Need to Know About Who, How, Why and Why Not, the meeting at Orlando's Hyatt Regency Hotel will be the first LPO showcase to be staged by a US Bar association. The event promises to establish closer links between the US and Indian legal communities by drawing upon the talents of Florida-based practices and Indian lawyers who are engaged with US firms.

Organised by the Florida Bar's Continuing Legal Education Committee (CLE), in tandem with the South Asian Bar Association of Florida (SABA), the conference will discuss prominent aspects of India-based LPO such as corporate and transactional matters in offshoring; e-discovery processes; intellectual property; and the future of LPO and international law firms in India.

Speaking to IP Review Online, CLE coordinator and event co-chair Rahul P Ranadive filled in the background to the conference. 'SABA is a small and fairly new voluntary group of South Asian lawyers,' he said, 'but it actually helped to create the CLE with the Florida Bar. As CLE coordinator, I thought the topic was interesting, and SABA has always worked on its events with a partner or trade association.'

The event presented an opportunity for SABA and the Florida Bar to unite behind a field that Mr Ranadive feels has great potential. 'In the long view,' he said, 'the progress of growth tends to start with a big surge forward by first-movers, who then get a little pushback from people concerned about things like confidentiality, followed by another surge forward when confidence is established. This pattern tends to repeat itself, so it's a gradual process of evolution. But I think that in the next 25 to 30 years, LPO will increase its market share and continue to capture a larger portion of corporate counsel work. Also, law firms will slowly get into the habit of having a permanent LPO component or partner in India.'

Hosting an LPO conference is a fitting move for the Florida Bar: in January, it became an important player in the process of breaking barriers for legal outsourcing, widening the scope of how western law firms perceive the sector. That month, its Ethics Committee provided a formal opinion on LPO that not only permitted it, but stated clearly that sending legal work overseas should not be seen as encouraging unlicensed practice. According to the key text of the opinion, 'there is no ethical distinction when hiring an overseas provider of such services versus a local provider, and … contracting for such services does not constitute aiding the unlicensed practice of law, provided that there is adequate supervision by the law firm.'

The Bar set out a series of provisos recommending that, in all LPO relationships, lawyers should address ethical obligations concerning 'supervision of nonlawyers, conflicts of interest, confidentiality, and billing.' The opinion placed the Florida group in the frontline of Bar Associations that had formed positive views of LPO, alongside those of New York and Los Angeles.