PANGEA3 LLC

Pangea3 is addicted to information. For several years now, we’ve had a myriad of RSS feeds, blog subscriptions, Google alerts, etc. – the obvious intent of which are to keep us current on relevant happenings & developments with our clients and within the legal marketplace. Over the last 6 months or so, the volume of LPO-related (or legal outsourcing if you prefer) information has increased exponentially, and it is more than just my fellow industry leaders blogging, issuing press releases and having conference presentations uploaded to the web. Mainstream media and leading legal periodicals are discussing the LPO industry with breathtaking regularity, which is a fantastic indication of acceptance within the legal community. It’s indeed an exciting time, but that’s not my main point.

The main point of this post is how our industry is being represented within the mainstream media. It’s not as rosy a world as we’d hope. Take, for example, a new recurring column in the ACC Docket (the monthly magazine of the Association of Corporate Counsel (“ACC”), to which all 20,000 + ACC members are automatically subscribed) entitled “Outsource Resource.” The author of the column is Kenneth Cutshaw, General Counsel of Cajun Operating Company (d/b/a Church’s Chicken, a successful U.S. fast-food chain). I’ve read both of Mr. Cutshaw’s columns and have been very pleased with his insightful and thorough explanation and endorsement of the LPO industry. In both pieces, he goes into significant detail of how he, as the G.C. of Cajun Operating Company, came to realize the value of outsourcing some of his contract drafting work to an LPO based in Gurgaon, India. His satisfaction with the work product is the theme of both articles, and his endorsement of the LPO industry is made clear in phrases such as “state-of-the-art” and “efficient and capable providers.” On the surface, this recurring column and the glowing reviews from a General Counsel of a large U.S. company are perfect, visible endorsements for the entire LPO industry.

Unfortunately, all is not what it seems with Mr. Cutshaw. My colleagues and I happen to have crossed paths with Mr. Cutshaw on more than one occasion at events featuring discussions about LPO. It was during one of those events that we came to learn (from an unrelated party) that Mr. Cutshaw is actually on the leadership team of Kochhar LexServe, a Gurgaon, India-based LPO. Neither of his articles in the ACC Docket mention this fact. Mr. Cutshaw is simply credited as “the executive vice president and general counsel of Cajun Operating Company d/b/a Church’s Chicken located in Atlanta, Ga.,” and within his articles he repeatedly includes himself within the “brotherhood” of in-house counsel. Not once in either article does Mr. Cutshaw make reference to an affiliation with any LPO.

Now, in order to stress my main point, please take a moment to think about this situation.

The LPO industry has been accepted within the legal community to the point where a publication no less prestigious than the ACC Docket includes a regular column on the industry. Let’s call that one HUGE step forward for LPO. Then, there’s our protagonist, Mr. Cutshaw, G.C. of a large, well-known restaurant chain. Let’s cut to the chase and call his overzealous promotion of an industry in which he has a clear, but undisclosed personal interest at least one HUGE step backward for LPO.

So to my point: the LPO industry has matured and evolved an incredible amount since I joined Pangea3 two years ago. This is due in large part to the hard work and dedication of my colleagues at Pangea3, our peers within the other leading LPOs and – most importantly – our incredibly skilled and dedicated attorneys, engineers and other professionals in India. But, when I see situations like Mr. Cutshaw’s veiled promotion of his personal LPO interests in the ACC Docket, it reminds me that there are still some elements within our industry that have the potential to discredit all of us.

Going forward, I can only hope that market forces (led by our sophisticated clients and peer LPO providers) will educate, or weed out and silence, those entities and individuals who seek to misuse the media’s interest in the LPO industry for their own personal gains.