In 2006 and 2007 the bar associations of New York, California and Los Angeles had declared their views that there appeared to be no ethical problems with the offshoring of legal support work by American attorneys to lawyers in other countries under certain conditions. Many United States attorneys and law firms are already adopting such ethical guidelines.
According to the president of SQ Global Solutions, Ram Vasudevan, this nod can only result in the Indian LPO market, currently measured at $130 million and with around 1,000 non-lawyers and lawyers, carrying out important legal outsourcing services in India, growing by leaps and bounds in the near future. In fact, according to Forrester Research, it is expected to reach $4-billion by 2015.
Vasudevan has been quoted as saying, “The guidelines state that US lawyers who are contemplating outsourcing legal services to other countries should inform their client that the work is being outsourced, besides protecting the client’s confidences. The US law firm should also be closely involved in the supervision of the outsourced work. In addition, the entity performing the work must perform conflict checks to avoid any unpleasant surprises.”

Citing how SQ follows the Six Sigma process, he affirms, “Companies in India directly deal with the legal departments of US corporations and law firms for outsourcing work to avoid any issues of unauthorized practice and usually have several quality control metrics in place.”
SQ Global Solutions, which is based in New York, is a mutual undertaking between Quislex, which is a provider of offshore legal services in India and Strategic Legal Solutions, which is an American domestic legal staffing company that has been operational for the last twelve years. Quislex has about 300 professionals. Around 150 of them work abroad.