Legal Process Outsourcing hope to law students

Legal process outsourcing vastly overtook all prediction in the legal systems prevailed connected with litigation support activities. When it was largely practiced crossing all legal barriers and frontiers of outsourcing, most of its advantages been utilized by outsourcing firms as well as LPO service providers. It is true that most of its possibilities and advantages were effectively utilized by the legal industry leading law firms located in United States, UK, Canada and Australia. Now the practice of legal process outsourcing is in many ones focus area when corporate companies found hidden treasure in legal outsourcing works. Mainly some sort of works coming under document review, legal writing, contract drafting, etc are manageable for the IT outsourcing firms by deploying few expert law graduates with few years of experience in legal outsourcing firms and paralegal services.

Legal process outsourcing is currently providing a big hope for law students. Even the big law firms and in house legal departments of multinational corporate have started to shrink the number of in house attorneys and legal councils. LPO has its own hope and it ensures the feature of law students in India and other Asian countries like Sri Lanka, Philippines.

The latest trend of allowing home based works by bigger business firms has boosted the chance of Legal process outsourcing a lot. It is true that the current law students are not in a feared row of non acceptance and recognitions by getting placements in better law firms. Most of them are already researching on how to complete legal tasks related to other jurisdictions.

The president of Australian law students association has recently reported that the sudden growth in the Legal process outsourcing has raised the cost of paralegal hiring. If we analyze the Indian market, the results are contrasting. According to Adv. Jolly John, famous Legal process outsourcing entrepreneur from India, the comparison of costs in paralegal hiring and legal outsourcing is entirely different. He has stated that the proficiency in carrying out document review, legal drafting, legal research and litigation support works may make the paralegals effective but when coming to legal outsourcing there much more skills and requirements. When it comes to legal freelancers or freelance attorneys there will be some more extra formalities connected with communication and interactions with the clients. In some contests, the legal freelancers need to modify their attitudes like legal consultants.

Legal Outsourcing may damage UK Ministry

Legal Outsourcing may damage UK Ministry. Guardian UK reports that the Parliamentary watchdog of United Kingdom, Justice committee chair has said that there can be many train crashes in UK ministry if they are going to sight a contract on outsourcing their legal works. The Justice committee mainly argue like the ministry department can not aware about even how it works like. The Justice committee defined the process of legal outsourcing by doing contract with external institutions and foreign bodies as a coming soon multiple train crash.

Sir Alan Beith, the chairman of selection committee of Justice, criticized the situation of decision of court interpreters and called it as inglorious saga.

There was an another report published by Guardian UK on May 29 2013 about the issues of privatizing the court system narrated by Sarah Vine.The report soundly criticize about the leaked news about outsourcing of legal process by the court system of United Kingdom.

Now the Public accounts committee and National Audit office came in the same words of criticism made by the Justice select committee. The action of adopting a private contractor for court related tasks.

Gcorelab Gets $482,000 For New Battery Cooling Technology

Singapore based thermal management company named Gcorlab will get $4,80,000 for their new technology invention. The thermal management company has invented new technology which keep the batteries cool. By their invention on battery cooling now laptop batteries, mobile and car batteries can be kelp cool even after a long time usage. The company in their invention, they uses combined way of using air and liquid thermal management system in lithium batters, which are widely used in mobiles, laptops, i phones, electronic cars etc.

As Google and tech giants are planning featured product enterprises like electrical car manufacturing, many electronic devices which use lithium batteries, the invention from the side of Gcorelab will be highly demanding one. There are many cooling tower manufacturing companies which were conducting various experiments for finding an appropriate invention which reduces the heat of the lithium batteries.

Gcorelab Gets $482,000 For New Battery Cooling Technology

Allowed legal advertising

IS IT IN THE PROCESS OF GETTING ALLOWED

However, recently on 2008, The Bar Council of India told a three-member bench of the Supreme Court headed by Justice B N Aggarwal that it has decided to let advocates advertise on the internet.

An advocate, V B Joshi, filed a petition in this particular bench challenging Rule 36, Section IV of the Bar Council of India rules which prohibits the advocates practicing in India to advertise.

However, the BCI decide that advocates could only furnish the information on their chosen website which will allows advocates to mention in their names, telephone numbers, e-mail IDs and professional and educational qualifications, specialization and experience in websites of their choice.

However, such advertisements can be issued within the guidelines and parameters fixed by it under the amended regulations and any breach of that  would be met with disciplinary action as  it will be held as professional misconduct. It was held that hat unlike western countries; Indian lawyers can be allowed to advertise freely on basis of various socio-economic values and ethical norms.

Henceforward, the court directed the petitioner to file his response to the amended rule of the BCI and adjourned the matter.

However, though this can be held as a significant change, this can’t be held as full permission to advertise by legal professionals in India thereby leading to various constraints in successfully carrying this profession.

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Provision of Legal Advertising

A STATUTE WHICH IS VIOLATING THE WTO AND GATT PROVISIONS

Even the Indian Supreme Court in the case of Tata Press Ltd. v. Mahanagar Telephones Ltd has recognized commercial speech as being a part of the right to free speech and thereby highlighted the high importance of the right to advertise, which will be beneficial not only for the advertiser but also for  the consumer.

 

Ironically, India lay down its rules of prevention of advertising of advocate as per the rules of Bar Council as not to advertise by lawyers as per the  tradition in British law which itself allowed it’s attorneys to advertise since late eighties as laid down by Rule 7 of the code of conduct laid down by the Solicitors Regulation Authority unless Rule 7.05 lays down that they have to take responsibility for publicity done by them and also they can’t authorize somebody else to advertize on behalf of them. Advertising shouldn’t be deprived of the integrity of the profession or shouldn’t harm the reputation of the profession.

 Therefore, leaflets and pamphlets and brochures relating to a certain advocate’s work and expertise are commonly noticed there. Also, as per the British Codes of Advertising and Sales Promotion, barristers may even include their own pictures, previous cases argued by them, information regarding their specialization or expertise or even their methods of charging etc. However, they are not allowed to solicit their work on basis of their experience, or through any fellow practitioner or any solicitor. France has somewhat a conservative approach towards legal advertising though it’s not a blanket ban like India and other European countries like Italy (through the Basil Decree on 2004), Spain or Germany have fully allowed legal advertising. India have opened up as a liberal economy way back in 1991 and as a process, have embraced globalization then why can’t it allow legal advertising in this highly competitive market when most of its lawyers and law firms want and are fully capable enough to compete in the international market for which they need advertising as a tool. Though some International directory can provide lawyers and law firms in India and their areas of specialization which can’t be used for domestic purposes by the clients.

Also, Asian countries like Malaysia, Hongkong and Singapore have started relaxing their rules on advertising by advocates as it was held totally illegal for a long period in these countries. However, Malaysia’s Legal Profession Publicity Rules (2001) led down that lawyers can advertise in legal and non legal directories various publications, journals etc and interviews in electronic and print media but not through clients. Lawyers are prohibited from advertising in Hong Kong on television, radio and cinema but are allowed in print, and also through various PR and branding progammes. In Singapore legal advertisements are allowed with limited restrictions.

 

Most countries in the world have already adopted a liberal policy towards legal advertising because used implemented properly, it can outweigh the negative effects of misleading and false advertisements and can meet the global demands imposed on the present Indian legal industry. It would also prove beneficial for the clients as they will have informed choices about the legal industry.

It has often argued that advertising can only be guided by the Consumer Protection Act and whether legal profession in India can be held as a trade or business. It will be relevant enough to quote here some of the landmark judgments regarding this issue. As in the case of Supreme Court in Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board v. A. Rajappa, the supreme court held that legal profession is covered under the definition of the term Industry under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 and also in the case of Srimathi vs. Union of India, the  Madras High Court held that section 3 of the Consumer protection Act says that the Consumer Redressal Forums can deal with advocates regarding their services as section 2(u)of the Consumer Protection Act clearly lays down that the term service can be held in as per the Consumer ProtectionAct,2002.Therefore, legal services can be held as one of the services under the Consumer Protection Act.

Also ,as India is part of the WTO and therefore, all WTO laws and regulations can be held bound upon it and WTO fully recognizes legal services as a part of the business services as it is listed  as a subsection of Business Services in WTO Services Sectoral Classification list. And as legal services can be held as a part of the business services therefore advertising should be allowed there in order to effectively market itself or a part of its marketing strategies. Also, GATT lays down12 services as a Business services which is further divided into 6 types of professional services. And legal services have been termed as one of these 6 professional services. As India is one of the founder signatories of the GATT, it should abide by its criteria and allow advertisement as one of the demands of the professional services. Also, as per commitments are concerned, India have only made them regarding engineering services and not regarding legal services unlike several countries of the world.

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Legal Advertising in US and UK

POSITION IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD

Advocates in many other prominent parts of the world are allowed freely to advertise about their work thanks to globalised economy as norms lay down by the WTO as advocacy is seen as a means of trade practice. Earlier even in liberalized countries like USA and UK didn’t allow advertising but slowly even they allowed in the late seventies and eighties.

In USA, it is even impossible to distinguish between false and misleading advertisements from the correct ones banning advertisements by lawyers was rejected totally by the US Supreme Court which held that people's right to information contradicts with this ban and frivolous intention of false advertisement is not a sufficient ground to prevent advertising by lawyers in good faith. The right of lawyers to advertise has been recognized as a part of commercial speech. The US attorneys are allowed to advertise of their work or publicize as per the rules of client attorney relationship under model rules of professional ethics laid down by the American Bar though advertisement to any potential customer or soliciting work through telephonic conversations and agents are not allowed. In USA, the lawyers are even charged high or less depending on the services they provide (their specialization) for example, a tax lawyer may be charged $5 per hour for his ads whereas a lawyer specialized in providing foreclosure defense services will be charged $7 per hour for his ads as per the data provided by the Wall Street Journal. And this is the real scenario there regarding highly competitive legal advertisements whereas in India we can’t even imagine such a position.

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