When legal tasks are shipped offshore, it threatens the jobs of some in-house lawyers and staff

Increasingly, law departments are taking a look at offshore legal process firms. When the general counsel does that, a sotto voce fret might drift through the hallways of the department – “worry about your job!” To the extent law-related work goes overseas, that shift threatens someone’s current job.

You can never be sure whether protestations about quality, unauthorized practice of law, hidden costs, and lack of exportable work are not masking insecurity and job protection (See my post of May 23, 2008: unauthorized practice of law.).