ROBO-LAWYERS! ROBO-LAWYERS! - National

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Not Quite Contempt Made in Elbonia The legal outsourcing trend’s logical endpoint. That designer Tshirt you purchased from your local Gap store inevitably carries a telltale label that discloses the garment’s country of origin. Generally, that country is some far-flung place like India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia or China, where the craftsmanship is able and the labour is cheap. Welcome to the world of outsourcing, which companies like Wal-Mart have turned into a strategy to conquer the world. Will we see a day when legal opinions, court briefs and patent applications bear a little tag that says Made in India? It seems we’re just about there. It turns out that some Canadian law firms are taking a Wal-Mart approach to producing legal work for sale. Last summer, CanWest News Service picked up a story (first reported in the June 2006 issue of this very magazine) that Canadian lawyers have started outsourcing legal work to common-law trained lawyers in India, ostensibly to take advantage of that country’s substantially lower labour costs. One of the supposed benefits of this type of outsourcing is the time-zone difference. We work while you sleep, touts the website of an Indian law firm. It’s kind of like the timer on your dishwasher or breadmaker. Instead of waking up to clean dishes or a warm loaf, you’re greeted in the morning with a freshly baked legal memo. On the other hand, one of the downsides of time-zone differential is that “passing off,” much practised in some North American firms, becomes more difficult. This usually occurs where the partner has an associate do the research and write the legal opinion. The partner, usually after reading the draft, signs his name to the letter. By Douglas Mah When called upon to amplify a fine point, the partner turns to Dexter (the associate), who warbles off the correct answer. It becomes a little more challenging when Dexter is on the other side of the world, works for a foreign law firm, and is probably doing his sleeping at that very moment. Should outsourcing catch on, the surfeit of well-trained common-law lawyers poised offshore to charge out at $20 an hour might make Canadian associates feel somewhat nervous. What’s the saving grace? Well, local lawyers have the advantage of actually being able to practise law in a Canadian jurisdiction. And eventually, some overly enterprising Canadian law firm will go to the wrong country in an effort to cut costs. I point to the example of Elbonia, the fourth-world country to which Dilbert’s employer has outsourced its IT jobs. For the uninitiated, Elbonia has recently converted from communism to capitalism, but because its economy (as well as its infrastructure) is based on mud, and its bearded people (including the females) are inherently slow-witted, it is still backward and primitive. Some Canadian law firms and legal departments might find it an inviting venue for outsourced work. If your NATIONAL firm is considering this move, here are some things to note about Elbonia and its lawyers. • Elbonians are a literal people. They will work for peanuts. The lawyers especially like the salted kind. • Elbonian lawyers can’t understand the stipulation of a “72-hour turnaround time.” To an Elbonian, that’s an awfully long time to do a pirouette. But hey, if you want to pay Elbonian lawyers to do pirouettes, they’ll gladly accept the work. • If you instruct an Elbonian lawyer to prepare a boilerplate contract, he will use an actual boilerplate. Should you state your expectation that the contract needs to be well done, he will cook it extra long for you. If you were to ask your Elbonian lawyer to “throw together a legal opinion over the weekend,” on Monday you would receive a mud collage resembling a Jackson Pollock that illustrates some important Elbonian legal principles. • As Elbonia is one of the few places on the planet the Internet doesn’t reach, documents are required to be transmitted by the sole local mode of transport: giant slingshot. Dilbert dislikes this method for personal travel because he always loses his luggage. Likewise, important client documents and legal work product would go astray, possibly falling into enemy hands and losing all character of privilege. • Since Elbonians can only communicate in their native language, their documents would be difficult to understand hereabouts. Some Canadian firms might find the judge commenting that the firm’s briefs are more incomprehensible than usual. You might think I’m being fanciful, and that this whole business of Canadian law firms outsourcing to Elbonia is farfetched. After all, isn’t Elbonia a fictitious country? Well, I can tell you about a travel blog I visited where a number of American, Canadian and U.K. residents, in all seriousness, were debating exactly where Elbonia is. You see, one of them wanted to book a trip there. N .................................................................. Douglas Mah is an Edmonton lawyer and writer. 54 OCTOBER · NOVEMBER 2006 STEPHEN MACEACHERN
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