PANGEA3 LLC

We are pleased to announce that Pangea3 is now part of Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading provider of intelligent information to businesses and professionals.

Thomson Reuters and Pangea3 are committed to serving the legal workflow needs of corporate legal departments and law firms worldwide. With the expertise, support and global reach of the Thomson Reuters organization and legal products like Westlaw, we are confident that we will be able to provide an even more comprehensive suite of legal services and support for corporate legal departments and law firms worldwide.

As we move forward, customers can continue to turn to their current service/sales and other business contacts at Pangea3 for information and service.

Both Pangea3 and Thomson Reuters are excited by the new opportunities this acquisition will provide the legal marketplace, and we look forward to serving your needs now and into the future.

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Greg McPolin, Vice President, Litigation Services at Pangea3, has been asked to lend the voice of his vast experience, both as a litigator and as an outsourcing and e-discovery expert, to a webcast put on by DRI – The Voice of the Defense Bar. The webcast is called, “Small World: The Ethics of Legal Process Outsourcing and Off-Shoring,” and Greg and the other presenters will cover themes in that vein that are useful to a range of in-house counsel, outside counsel and law firm managers. They will include avoiding the unauthorized practice of law when outsourcing, keeping client information confidential and preventing conflicts of interest when outsourcing — topics that should be top of mind for anyone considering legal process outsourcing.

Greg isn’t the only expert being consulted. Khristi Doss Driver, a member of DRI’s Electronic Discovery Committee and a member of the law firm Haskell Slaughter Young & Rediker will chair the webcast, and Stacy L. Moon, of Fees & Burgess PC, and DRI’s Lawyers’ Professionalism and Ethics Committee will also present. The webcast will take place on Thursday, December 2, from 1:00 p.m.- 3:00 p.m. Central Time. Register online beforehand, and be sure to check out their member and bulk registration discounts.

A few weeks ago, our blog entry “Legal Process Outsourcing Changes Legal Industry,” discussed the ongoing movement towards outsourcing in the legal field. This fall, Legal Ethics Opinion 1850 from the Virginia Bar association also gave a nod to “the uptick in [legal] outsourcing.” With LEO 1850 on outsourcing of legal services, the Virginia Bar addresses issues that could potentially be caused by outsourcing and recommends a framework for the ethical execution of an arrangement it calls “highly beneficial to the lawyer and the client.”

First among the recommendations is that proper due diligence is done by the hiring lawyer or law firm on the contract lawyers or LPO being hired. It’s the hiring party’s responsibility to ensure that the outsourcing partner is competent and can actually deliver the legal services promised, within the same ethical bounds as the lawyer. In order to guarantee that this standard of behavior is being met, the hiring party should supervise the outsourcing partner as thoroughly as possible. Overall, the opinion emphasizes that the buck stops with the lawyer—i.e., the work the outsourcing partner is hired for is still the responsibility of the hiring lawyer, regardless of to whom it’s been delegated.

It thus remains the lawyer’s responsibility to “maintain independent legal judgment regarding the client’s matters,” unimpeded by the outsourcing partner. The client is ultimately the most important party in the arrangement, so it should give consent before any confidential information is shared with the contract lawyers or LPO provider. Further, the lawyer should be extra-careful that the outsourced party has the proper procedures and security measures in place when confidential information is involved.
These guidelines are in line with the ethics opinions released by the ABA and bar associations around the country. As yet, only a draft opinion is available.

The Global LPO Conference 2010, organized by KPO Consultants, offers a smorgasbord of events that will acquaint both buyers and sellers of legal process outsourcing with the array of offerings from LPO providers based in India and beyond. Speaking at the event will be a who’s who of executives from legal outsourcing companies. Pangea3 co-CEO Sanjay Kamlani will be a key speaker, presenting twice during the course of the conference. The two day outsourcing extravaganza will include one-on-one meeting opportunities and a “Global LPO Mall” divided into “Zones” with displays from LPO vendors and software companies, a “Training Zone,” for the LPO training institutes that prepare Indian lawyers to work at LPOs, and yet another zone for LPO vendors from LPO destinations outside of India.

The conference will be at the Radisson Hotel, Noida, November 13-14. If you’re interested in the conference but Noida is a little far, KPO Consultants is conveniently hosting the event online. The virtual conference contains almost all of the functionality of actually being in Noida, allowing one to not only attend presentations and panels, but also participate in Q&As, chat with exhibitors at the Global Mall, and hold one-on-one meetings with the LPO vendors.

Pangea3 co-CEO David Perla will be the only representative of an LPO provider at the Practising Law Institute Outsourcing Seminar that began yesterday and ends today. The conference is focused not so much on the pros and cons of outsourcing, as the nuts and bolts of getting a deal together. The 123’s of negotiating a legal outsourcing agreement will be covered in such sessions as “Outsourcing Contracting Process” by John F. Delaney and William A. Tanenbaum of Morrison & Foerster LLP and Kaye Scholer LLP, respectively, and “Risk Allocation, Liability Limitations and Dispute Resolution,” presented by George Kimball, Senior Counsel of Hewlett Packard Company.

David’s session, “Ethical Issues in Legal Process Outsourcing,” will offer the sole MCLE Ethics credit of the conference. His presentation, today from 3:30-4:30, covers ethics opinions from various bar associations, confidentiality, avoiding practice of law and appropriate billing, among other things.

In total the conference is worth 14 MCLE credits in New York, and the state-by-state information is available on the PLI website. If you’re not in New York for the live conference, or in Mechanicsburg, Philadelphia, Pittsburg or Boston for the Groupcasts, you can catch it as a Webcast online.

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