PANGEA3 LLC

Pangea3 is the recognized industry leader in legal outsourcing services – with a heart.

As part of Pangea3’s Corporate Social Responsibility program, our team recently volunteered for Janvi Charitable Trust (JCT), an NGO that conducts primary education programs, vocational training and income generation programs, medical camps, health awareness camps and disaster and waste management programs for underprivileged families in Mumbai. The trust operates a Balwadi (primary education/day care center) in Ambedkar Nagar, Saki Vihar Road, near Pangea3’s Mumbai offices.

To kick off our voluntary initiative with the JCT Balwadi, we organized a Christmas party for under-privileged children. Children, 3 to 7 years old, from the Trust operated day care center were invited to our Mumbai offices to celebrate Christmas with us.

Planning for this event however started weeks in advance. Members of different teams came together to brainstorm ways to give these children a special holiday celebration.
Arrangements were made enthusiastically for refreshments, games and music. We wanted December 26, 2008 to be special for the children and our employees alike.

By December 26th, the entire office was filled with excitement and holiday cheer. Children were welcomed into the colorfully decorated office by our team volunteers. The children and volunteers spent the evening playing games, singing and dancing to popular Bollywood music. It was a delightful scene to watch the children celebrate the holidays. The evening ended with the volunteers distributing a special Christmas gift for each child.

The happiness we saw in the eyes of every child who came to our office that day will stay with us for a long time. The sense of fulfillment we all experienced has encouraged us to find more ways we can assist the children of this Balwadi. Our cameras did capture the moments of joy…..

As ‘Pangeans’, we firmly believe we can do a great job volunteering for a variety of things in society by extending a helping hand.

February 1, 2009 – Pangea3 celebrates its fourth anniversary as it ended a banner year and it further established itself as the industry leader in legal outsourcing.

In 2008, we received the prestigious International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 270001:2005 Information Security Management certification for our physical and data security practices and processes. We were also recognized by Valuenotes Research as an industry leader in patent outsourcing.

As 2009 progresses our goal is to continue to lead the legal outsourcing industry by continuing to provide our clients with world-class quality services at compelling savings. In addition to enhancing customer values, as a corporate citizen, we will endeavor to fulfill the needs of the global community through various corporate social responsibility initiatives, practices and programs.

In the December, 2008 issue of the ABA Journal, the “flagship magazine of the American Bar Association,” there is a feature article about the anonymous life of a contract document review attorney in New York City:

Down in the Data Mines
A tale of woe from the basement of legal practice.

The anonymous author describes the bleak work environment and perverse incentives of lawyers living the document review life in New York and, presumably, elsewhere.

Aside from the unpleasant work environment and seeming lack of respect accorded to these attorneys, in-house counsel should be keenly interested in the perverse incentives under which such lawyers work.

The anonymous author describes how he makes “$35 an hour for the first 40 hours and $52.50 for each hour thereafter.” The economic incentive, then, is to work more than 40 hours per week, despite the fact that the 41st hour (or 51st or 61st) is no more effective than the 40th hour. It is difficult to maintain consistent high quality when attorneys are reaching for more than 40 hours week after week just to make more money.

Beyond this striving for overtime, however, is an even worse incentive. As the author says:

“The reality is even worse: If I review 100 documents per hour (a very fast pace), I get paid the same hourly rate as if I review 30. More-over, each project consists of a finite number of documents; so the faster I work, the sooner I am out of a job and need to start hustling for the next project.

‘Don’t work us out of a job,’ a veteran contract attorney once derided me in private after I reviewed too many documents on the first day of a new project. And the firm is usually OK with this attitude; in my experience, speed and accuracy have always taken backstage to billable hours.”

There is a better way.

Pangea3 has moved to a unit pricing model for document review. We charge by the document, the page and the gigabyte. Aside from absolute lower costs for off-shore review what are the benefits?

1. Incentives Are Aligned: We work for speed and accuracy, not project longevity. Because we don’t charge overtime, it makes no economic sense for us to artificially extend projects. Because we don’t pay our people overtime, it makes no economic sense for them to work inefficiently or past the point where they are working effectively.

2. Fixed Costs: By charging by the document, page or gigabyte, our clients can easily know the cost of a review before the review commences.

If you haven’t tried off-shore review, give us a call and we’ll show you how going off-shore, where our incentives are aligned with yours, can lower costs and increase quality.