PANGEA3 LLC

A recent piece in the ABA Journal cites an article in the Columbia Law Journal, which article asserts that the ethical rules for using and supervising Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) providers are unclear, and that the legal industry needs clarity on these rules since American corporations and law firms are increasing their use of and reliance on offshore legal outsourcing companies. What nonsense, and what an uninformed attempt to yet again spread fear, uncertainty and doubt. If the last refuge of people opposed to real competition is to spread fear about a dislocative industry or technology, then outsourcing legal services to India is clearly working.

Pangea3’s operations and business model are specifically engineered to comply with state practice of law statutes, at both the client and provider levels.

Having spent the entirety of our professional careers as lawyers, when my Co-CEO Sanjay Kamlani (like me - Penn Law JD 1994) and I founded Pangea3 one of the first things that we dealt with was to ensure that our model of using American and Indian lawyers to provide legal services to in-house counsel and their law firms comported with practice of law statutes. In fact, we consulted with Geoffrey Hazard, our former Penn Law professor, and one of America’s leading authorities on Legal Ethics to make sure that our model complied with practice of law restrictions under the Model Rules and New York State’s Disciplinary rules.

In early 2005, Professor Hazard reviewed the Model Rules (including Rule 5.5), New York’s Disciplinary Rules and caselaw, and provided Pangea3 with a legal opinion that an offshore legal service operation that was a facsimile of Pangea3’s business model would not trigger any practice of law issues.

Importantly, Professor Hazard opined that there would be no danger to preserving privilege if a U.S. attorney used Pangea3’s services because Pangea3 works as an agent for the delegating attorney.

The lesson here is that so long as the delegating attorney instructs the Indian attorneys that the communications and work product are privileged and makes sure that the Indian attorneys understand that guidance and instruction, then the delegating attorney has complied with his professional responsibilities and the privilege will be preserved. In that case, Pangea3 is no different

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Usually, imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery. And as the leading LPO firm, we are used to having our ideas and materials copied. But even we were taken aback when Global Legal Support Group copied entire pages from the Pangea3 website, including entire service line descriptions. If you’re curious, the copied pages can be seen here

Holding yourself out as a new LPO company is one thing - stealing someone else’s materials and lying to potential customers is something entirely different. I would think that a company that claims to use a Harvard Law graduate as a supervisor would seek to set a better example to prospective clients.

Normally, we’d just call the owner and get the infringing material taken down. But there’s a bigger problem here - all these upstart LPO’s and new entrant legal outsourcing companies are causing massive confusion in the marketplace, and influencing potential clients in a negative way. A company who pretends to be a serious legal process outsourcing company but steals any IP, let alone a competitor’s website clearly doesn’t have the skills, resources or understanding of the law to represent serious clients. But if a prospective LPO client sees an infringing website and actually uses that company for services, the negative experience will turn off that client for good, to the client’s detriment and to the detriment of the legitimate LPO’s that have worked so hard over the past five years to build this industry.

So it is critical, now more than ever, that the leaders of our industry continue to evolve standards and rules that provide our clients and potential clients the assurance that working with a leader will in fact provide a world-class legal service. And it is equally critical that we point out when a new entrant is little more than a website that steals content from an industry leader.

ACC’s Annual Meeting is the largest annual gathering of in-house counsel in the world. You can chose from over 100 interactive programs led by international expert panels of in-house counsel, members of academia, and government agency representatives. That is why we are proud to be a part of it!

Pangea3 will be exhibiting our services at the ACC exhibit hall (at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago) on October 29-31, along with representatives from the top legal service providers worldwide. We are at booth 631. If you?re attending, be sure to stop by and experience a Magical new World of legal services.

ACC 2007 Floor Plan

Get detailed insight on our world-class Corporate, Litigation and Intellectual Property services and learn how offshoring legal sources empowers you to transform your legal department ? saving you time and money, and becoming more efficient, more effective and more profitable.

Stay tuned for more about the show here.