PANGEA3 LLC

I recently had the distinct honor of representing Pangea3 on a panel at the Center for Economic Policy Studies’ (CEPS) Fall Symposium at Princeton University. The title of this prestigious event was “Offshoring: Opportunity, Threat, or Both?” The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman (author of “The World Is Flat” and several other excellent tomes) delivered the Keynote, and some of the world’s leading economists spoke at the 2 day event, including Alan Blinder and Jan Hatzius, Chief Economist at Goldman Sachs. Alan is the Founder and Co-Chair of CEPS, and he moderated my panel, which included a consultant (Tom Weakland of Diamond Management), an outsourcing “consumer” (Margaret Canella of J.P. Morgan) and a service provider (me, Pangea3).

My panel was entitled “Offshoring in Practice: Reports from Ground Level” and was the last of the Symposium. It was also the only session to feature non-economists. In preparing for the event, I was quite concerned about how my comments on my 10-plus years in outsourcing (both in private practice and as part of the Management Team at P3) would resonate with these great economic minds. Their reactions caught me off-guard and I learned a very important lesson about the rapidly growing market for offshore legal services and Pangea3’s role as an industry pioneer.

My presentation was focused on defining the offshore legal services industry, and explaining who Pangea3 is and the types of work we do. I expected my audience to lose focus when I got into the details of how we recruit and train our attorneys, the types of customized processes we implement for our global clients, and the types of matters on which we’re working. I knew they wanted to talk dollars and cents, currency-exchange issues and long-term economic forecasting. Instead, they asked the very same questions that I’m used to hearing from all of the U.S. and U.K. attorneys with whom I am constantly speaking. Questions like: How do you ensure quality? What about privacy and confidentiality concerns? It was stunning that this audience hit me with the exact concerns that our clients and prospects have.

The lesson I learned from this? Simply stated, it’s clear to me that the intellectual debate over offshoring has become merely that: intellectual. Finally. Complex, thoughtful discussions on global economics are indeed valuable and necessary, but at the end of the day, a roomful of non-attorneys did not seem fazed by the notion of Pangea3’s Indian attorneys doing U.S. and U.K. legal work. Their questions were focused on the details of how we do the work, rather than whether it is good for the economy or how this will impact the distinguished U.S. and U.K. legal professions.

I’m hopeful that the insight demonstrated at this Symposium is further proof that offshoring, and in particular, the offshoring of legal services, has matured to the point where it is viewed as a key, but uncontroversial, element of our economy.