PANGEA3 LLC

Pangea3 presented the final session of the Practising Law Institute’s (PLI) two-day educational seminar and networking event, “Outsourcing 2011: Structuring, Negotiation and Governance” in New York.

At the session, Greg McPolin, Pangea3 Vice President and Managing Director, Global Litigation Solutions, explained in detail the complex ethical issues and legislative nuances involved with legal process outsourcing (LPO), and provided clear guidance for counsel seeking to establish and maintain effective LPO relationships.

Mr. McPolin’s presentation, “Ethical, Legislative and Practical Issues in Legal Process Outsourcing,” was held at the PLI New York Center, Tuesday, Nov. 1 at 3:30 p.m. Eastern and is now available on-demand.

“Attorneys can create significant value for their clients with the use of LPO, that’s no longer a secret,” says McPolin. “There are, however, some ethical and legal issues to consider. Understanding these issues, and addressing them upfront, is essential to the success of any LPO engagement.”

Key session topics included:

• Selecting and supervising an LPO provider
• Client disclosure and consent
• Avoiding conflicts of interest
• Confidentiality guidelines and policies
• Avoiding the unauthorized practice of law
• Appropriate billing for outsourced legal work

For a complete “Outsourcing 2011” agenda and to register for the on-demand webinar, visit the Practising Law Institute website.

This November 10th, the 15th Annual Electronic Discovery and Records Retention (EDRR) Conference will host a series of roundtable discussions, led by electronic discovery experts. Hosted by fellow Thomson Reuters businesses, West LegalEd and the Hildebrandt Institute, this conference will help attendees gain the in-depth knowledge needed to master the rapidly changing e-Discovery field, and provides them practical ways to implement what they’ve learned into their electronic discovery. Topics that will be covered include:

• Data Assessment - Early & Often
• Project Management
• Data Privacy Concerns
• Cloud Computing
• Social Media

Greg McPolin, Vice President and Managing Director, Global Litigation Solutions, Pangea3, will lead the afternoon breakout Budgeting, Risk & Proportionality Analysis along with David Lender of Weil Gotshal & Manges. For more information about the event, click here. Be sure to check back on the blog for more on other upcoming events.

U.S. patent legislation was reformed by the America Invents Act in September 2011, for the first time in over 60 years. There hasn’t been a better time in decades to discuss patent litigation, and the Daily Journal and West LegalEdcenter have come together to host the Patent Disputes Forum, November 8th in Santa Clara, CA. Participants will discuss the impact of the America Invents Act on business relating to patent filings, as well as broader trends and best practices in the area of patent disputes.

Pangea3 is a proud sponsor of this event. Ken Nourse, Director of Litigation Solutions for Pangea3, will speak from 1:00-1:45 pm on the panel: “Creative Strategies For Solving Legal Issues With a Business Perspective – Outside Counsel View.” For more information about the event, click here.

Today’s law firms are dealing with more and more complex problems that call for an innovative look at the legal business. Helping to facilitate a conversation about legal solutions in our more complex world, Pangea3 is sponsoring the Fifth Annual Leading Law Firms Conference this October 28th in New York. The conference, hosted by Sandpiper Partners, will offer practical approaches to many of the challenges of managing a law firm in today’s world. Be sure to check back on the blog for more regarding the event, as well as other upcoming events.

The largest gathering of in-house counsel takes place this October 23-26th at the Pangea3 sponsored Association of Corporate Counsel Annual Meeting 2011.

The ACC Annual Meeting 2011 will present a wide variety of sessions on topics that are top of mind for corporate counsel, such as budgeting and alternative fee structure, ethics, compliance, and globalization, and the opportunity to interact with and learn from more than a thousand leading in-house counsel, legal industry experts and service providers.

In a question and answer style panel, Legal Process Outsourcing 2.0, Pangea3 co-CEO David Perla will speak with Dana Gilbert, Vice President and General Counsel—North America, Cognizant Technology Solutions, and Dennis Skarvan, Deputy General Counsel, Caterpillar, about:

• The decision to use an LPO Provider
• How to approach your first project with an LPO
• The evolution of the relationship between LPO provider and company
• Experiences working with attorneys based in India

Of the panel, David Perla says, “Legal process outsourcing has seen rapid growth since the financial crisis. This panel will trace both the evolution of the industry and the evolution of buyer and provider relationships.”

Pangea3, West, West LegalEd and Serengeti, all in the Thomson Reuters family, are holding a iPad raffle throughout the show. Visit 3 out 4 of our booths, and get a chance to win 1 of 10 iPads! If you’re at the show, stop by Pangea3 booth #237 to get started. We’ll also be serving regional Colorado specialties at the booths on Monday from 6:00-7:00 p.m., and fruit, brownies and cookies from 2:30-4:30 on Tuesday.

In addition to David, also at the conference from Pangea3 will be Greg McPolin, Vice President and Managing Director, Global Litigation Solutions, and Jonathan Goldstein, Vice President and Managing Director, Legal Solutions. For more information about the ACC event, click here. You can follow us during the conference on Twitter @Pangea3, and be sure to check back on the blog for more regarding the event, as well as other upcoming events.

In today’s increasingly global and competitive market, it has become essential for businesses to constantly evolve their business to stay ahead. This October 18th-20th, Pangea3 is sponsoring the Emptoris Empower 2011 Conference. The conference will explore the strategies required for businesses to excel, including tactics for accelerating cost reduction, managing complex spend categories, alleviating risks and volatility and maximizing operational effectiveness strategy.

Pangea3 co-CEO David Perla joins Patrick Eckhert, Director of Indirect Procurement at Cardinal Health in conducting the session: “Tackling the Bottlenecks in Your Enterprise.” This session will discuss ways to deal with process optimization, by showing how to outsource elements of the contracting process in order to assist the switch to automation. “I always enjoy presenting with Pat, and it’s a pleasure to have this opportunity to talk about legal process outsourcing with him, and the efficiencies it creates.”

Learn how process optimization can be achieved by leveraging complimentary paths at the Pangea3 sponsored Emptoris Empower 2011 Conference this October 18th-20th. For more information on or to register for the event, click here. You can follow us during the conference on Twitter @Pangea3, and be sure to check back on the blog for more regarding this and other upcoming events.

Internal pressure to provide legal services efficiently and cost-effectively to legal departments is rising, and many are meeting this demand by honing project management skills. This October 11th, Pangea3 is sponsoring the Litigation Project Management Series 2011 with InsideCounsel and West LegalEd at the Network Meeting Center at Techmart in Santa Clara, CA.

This conference will host experienced faculty who will show in-house counsel how to successfully apply the key principles of project management to litigation matters. Pangea3 Director of Litigation Solutions, Ken Nourse, will present critical insights into litigation project management (LPM) and its relevance to, and application by, in-house counsel.

“I’m looking forward to my interactive session focusing on the practical application of LPM models to the challenges presented by complex litigation,” says Ken, “Proper oversight of the litigation process has never been more challenging and participants will explore several ways of thinking about LPM in combination with real-life litigation scenarios that beg for efficient, effective, and defensible management.”

Regardless of the ultimate goal – be it honing LPM skills, gaining a better understanding of LPM principles for purpose of overseeing those who manage litigation more hands-on, or both – Ken believes that each participant will benefit from attending the Litigation Project Management Series 2011.

For more information about the event, click here. You can follow us on Twitter @Pangea3 for more litigation trends, and be sure to check back on the blog for more regarding the event, as well as other upcoming events.

It has become clear that more and more are choosing legal process outsourcing for further reasons than just cost savings, making the selection process of which LPO provider to use even more critical. To help ease this process, Marilyn O. Primiano released an article titled Top Ten Considerations When Evaluating Legal Process Outsourcing. Primiano does an excellent job highlighting key points of what steps to take when looking for an LPO provider, and brings up things to look for that you may not even think to consider.

Would you like to know more about how innovative in-house counsel select a LPO provider and incorporate legal outsourcing into their legal departments? We have several resources to help:

John Cheek, Senior Corporate Counsel of Caterpillar and Kristen Henzi, Associate General Counsel of MegaPath discuss how they utilize legal outsourcing in this on-demand webinar.

If you’re attending the ACC Annual Meeting 2011 stop at session 307 Legal Process Outsourcing 2.0 to hear Dana Gilbert, Vice President & General Counsel – North America of Cognizant Technology Solutions and Dennis Skarvan, Deputy General Counsel, Caterpillar discuss best practices and tactics for implementing a legal outsourcing successfully.

Of course, you can always follow us on twitter @Pangea3 for more tips on selecting the right LPO provider.

The increase in segmentation of law firms has firms at a crossroads—a major theme of this year’s Fourth Annual Global Law Firm Leaders Conference, presented by Sandpiper Partners on October 13rd and 14th in London.

The conference will feature 30 thought leaders who are reshaping the legal industry, including Pangea3 Vice President and Managing Director, Law Firm Relationships, Kevin Colangelo. On the panel, “Sustainability: How to Deal with Challenges to Profitability,” Kevin will discuss what firms can do to preserve profit margins with clients placing more pressure on firms to restructure approaches to legal services and fees. They will discuss delivering value to clients through:

• Alternative fees
• Provision of services in different ways through BPOs and LPOs
• Project and performance management
• Internal & external structural and organizational changes

Kevin further explains the panel: “At the conference we’ll talks a lot about the changes that we’re seeing in the traditional law firm delivery model. In the panel, we’ll delve into LPO’s place in the much larger, process-focused shifts law firms are experiencing.”

Learn how to structure a delivery model clients want, an attractive environment for talent, an innovative approach to legal services and alternative fees that work for both parties and a responsive organization at the Pangea3 sponsored Fourth Annual Global Law Firm Leaders Conference. For more information on or to register for the event, click here. You can follow us during the conference on Twitter @Pangea3, and be sure to check back on the blog for more regarding the event, as well as other upcoming events.

As the summer ends and we return from our “staycations” it is the time to reflect on litigation flowing from the 2008 subprime crisis. Not a day goes by without the media reporting on a new angle in the three-ring circus that is the “tsunami” of Mortgage-Backed Securities - related litigation. In order to survey the damage, let’s look at how we got here, where we are now, and where we may be going.

The Past: The Great American Class Action and The Running of the Statutes

To understand where we are now, it’s important to take a quick trip down memory lane. At the beginning of 2011, things looked bleak for individual MBS investors as federal judges denied class certification, MBS-trustees sat on their thumbs, hard evidence of individual breaches of reps and warranties was hard to come by, and statutes of limitations continued to run.

In early January, S.D.N.Y Judge Baer denied class certification¹ for a group of MBS investors, holding, amongst other things, that: (1) the class had different knowledge levels of the alleged loosening of mortgage-underwriting standards that led to the defaults and the decline in the value of the MBS, and; (2) the investors bought the securities at different times, when different amounts of information was available. In April, the Second Circuit agreed to consider² an interlocutory appeal of the denial of class, which has yet to be fully briefed.

Similarly, in May, Los Angeles federal court judge Mariana Pfaelzer³ held that a class could only bring claims “if named plaintiffs bought into specific tranches of specific offerings.”

Since then the tides have turned. Two judges in the Southern District have upheld MBS-investor class certification and courts have allowed plaintiffs to use statistical sampling in put-back cases.

In June and August two S.D.N.Y. Judges – Rakoff and Crotty⁴ – issued opinions allowing investors to pursue MBS-class actions against Bank of America and Credit Suisse, rejecting the banks argument that the purchasers couldn’t form a class because amongst them were sophisticated investors aware of the general deterioration in the housing markets and lending practices.

On August 24 - citing the opinions of Crotty and Rakoff – Reuters editor at large Alison Frankel reported⁵ that “MBS class actions turn[ed] a critical corner” and noted that the decisions will give “ammunition” in the appeal of Judge Baer’s decision⁶ before the Second Circuit.

With respect to use of statistical sampling and extrapolation to prove plaintiffs’ claims for breach of reps and warranties, on March 25, United States District Court Judge Paula Crotty in the Southern District of New York was the first federal judge to rule⁷ in favor of that methodology. Crotty held that a plaintiff could use statistical sampling to prove a generalized claim for breach, and was not limited to the loan-by-loan approach described in standard MBS agreements.

The Present: The FHA Lawyers Up and MBS Trustees get “Feisty”

Since August the focus of MBS litigation has been on: the recent volley of lawsuits by the Federal Housing Finance Agency; the increase in litigation brought by MBS trustees and the extent of the exposure to those suits; the running statutes of limitations; and the certification of MBS-investor classes. Below are the highlights in chronological order:

September 1- Due to the surge in MBS related lawsuits, Pangea3 established a taskforce dedicated to MBS-related document review. The taskforce was built upon our experience acquired first-hand through work on dozens of MBS-related litigations and investigations for many of the largest international banks.

September 2 - The FHFA entered the MBS litigation arena when its litigation counsel, Quinn Emanuel and Kasowitz Benson filed 17 suits⁸ against virtually all financial institutions in the MBS game asserting put-back claims.

September 6 - Analyzing those suits, Reuters reported⁹ that the 17 suits by the FHFA cite approximately $196 billion in MBS holdings by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but that the claims are more realistically valued at $40 billion – a number calculated by extrapolating the FHFA’s previously estimated percentage loss across the entire set of suits. Furthermore, Reuters stated that the $40 billion number does not include defenses by the banks designed to reduce their exposure dramatically.

September 10 - Bloomberg reported¹⁰ that recent decisions in the Southern District of New York, which allow class-action status for MBS investors, may result in banks suing their peer banks over losses from MBS issued by the defendant banks, suits they could not, and would not, have brought on their own.

September 14 - The American Banker reported¹¹ that due to statutes of limitations “[t]he clock is running down on investors looking to sue the nation’s largest banks.” The article noted that the 17 lawsuits by the FHFA were brought before the three-year anniversary of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s failure, ensuring they didn’t miss possible deadlines. The article explains though, that with respect to the relevant deadlines, “[l]egal arguments exist for both sides.”

September 15 - Reuters reported that MBS trustees were “getting feisty,”¹² foreshadowing a trend of MBS trustees taking action due to pressure from regulators “fed up” with their inaction and MBS investors who are “running out of time on securities claims.” Trustees were finally asserting claims on behalf of the trusts, after coming under serious scrutiny by NY attorney general Eric Schneiderman and Delaware AG Joseph Biden III, which resulted in state fraud claims against trustee BNY Mellon.

September 16 - Bloomberg reported¹³ that the “mortgage debacle” had already cost the nation’s five biggest home lenders at least $65.7 billion, and that “new claims may push the industry wide total to twice that amount.” Bloomberg’s tally was compiled from regulatory filings, company statements and financial presentations by the nation’s five biggest banks, which have lost, respectively: Bank of America - $39.1 billion; JPMorgan Chase - $16.3 billion; Wells Fargo - $5.09 billion; Ally Financial, previously known as GMAC Inc. - $3.28 billion; Citigroup - $1.9 billion.

The Future: The Second Circuit Will Speak and The Evidence Will Be Sorted

With so many interested parties and moving parts it is impossible to predict exactly where this wave of litigation will head. We could be facing years of laborious fact finding, dramatic public trials, or quick mass settlements. As observers we should look out for the following:

• The opinion of the Second Circuit with respect to the certification of MBS-classes
• The size and frequency of put back claims by trustees
• Motions to dismiss MBS claims for violation of applicable statutes of limitations

Just last week, on September 19, Reuters reported that, due to investor class actions and trustee lawsuits, the banks’ “put-back exposure,” from trustee and investors suits “may ultimately dwarf their securities law liability.” If so, hold on, because this ride has just begun.

Links:

1. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/19/markets-assetbackeds-idUSN1926043720110119
2. 2. http://www.law.com/jsp/tal/PubArticleTAL.jsp?id=1202492333999
3. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/19/bankofamerica-countrywide-idUSN1926858420110519
4. http://www.cohenmilstein.com/cases/231/hemt-mbs-litigation
5. http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/2011/08_-_August/MBS_class_actions_turn_a_crucial_corner/
6. http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/uploadedFiles/National_Litigation/News/2011/06_-_June/baerRALIclasscertopinion.pdf
7. http://www.subprimeshakeout.com/2011/05/top-five-reasons-we-havent-seen-the-last-of-the-mbs-lawsuits.html
8. http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2011/09/02/fhfa-sues-17-banks-over-massive-mortgage-losses-at-fannie-and-freddie/
9. http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/2011/09_-_September/Banks_face_huge_losses_from_FHFA_lawsuits-analysts/
10. http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LR84AT0UQVI901-5F6TEAVCB8O2C2LTGHRNK3S7IJ
11. http://www.americanbanker.com/syndication/statute-mortgage-backed-securities-1042193-1.html
12. http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/2011/09_-_September/MBS_trustees_(finally)_getting_feisty__Wells_sues_Bear_unit/
13. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-09-16/mortgage-debacle-costs-banks-66-billion-as-suits-sap-profit.html

Securities litigation is once again the center of the legal industry, and the timing couldn’t be better for IQPC’s 7th Securities and Litigation Summit. The summit, October 3rd and 4th at the Helmsley Hotel in New York City, will host a series of panels on the management of securities litigation risks in private suits and government enforcement activity. Greg McPolin, Vice President and Managing Director at Pangea3, is speaking on the “Effectively Litigating the Newest Complex Structured Products Claims” session at 3:50 p.m. on October 3.

This session will feature Q and A with Charlie Gambino, Director and Senior Counsel of Deutsche Bank, and Colby Allsbrook, Director and Counsel of Credit Suisse, moderated by Greg McPolin. It will discuss securities litigation in terms of the:

• Types of claims currently being litigated
• Current status of litigation regarding class actions
• Important industry developments currently being litigated
• Various strategies being used to defend structured product claims

Pick up new litigation strategies, network, and learn about new trends and practices in the securities litigation industry during the IQPC’s 7th Securities and Litigation Summit sponsored by Pangea3. For more information on or to register for the event, click here. You can follow us during the conference on Twitter @Pangea3, and be sure to check back on the blog for more regarding the IQPC event, as well as other upcoming events.

Have you ever wondered how legal process outsourcing clients select an LPO provider, integrate the provider into their legal department and determine success of the relationship? Attendees of the Virtual Corporate Counsel Forum this Sept 21st have an opportunity to hear in-house counsel discuss why LPO is becoming more than just a trend in the interactive CLE webinar Legal Outsourcing: In-house Counsel Discuss Strategies for Maximizing Value.

Jonathan Goldstein, Vice President and Managing Director, Legal Solutions of Pangea3, along with John Cheek, Senior Corporate Counsel of Caterpillar, and Kristen Henzi, Associate General Counsel of MegaPath, will discuss how legal process outsourcing has become a go-to strategy for those who want to expand capacity, while saving money. This team of experts will provide answers to many common questions about LPO including:

• What led you to consider LPO?
• How have you used LPO?
• Are there areas where you would like to expand the use of LPO?

This webinar will take place on September 21st from 11:30 AM- 12:30 PM EDT. For more information on or to register for the online conference, click here. You can follow us during the conference on Twitter @pangea3, and be sure to check back on the blog for more regarding the VCCF event, as well as other upcoming events.

We have always said that one of the most important ingredients in our “secret sauce” for exceeding the expectations of our current clients and winning new ones is our people. In the age of J-M Manufacturing’s recent malpractice suit against McDermott Will & Emery, one of the lessons learned is the importance of having the right managers and service providers in place; this, along with the right processes, makes it much easier for in-house and outside attorneys to fulfill their ethical duty to supervise.

The spectrum of legal service providers is broad and the differences are stark. On the one hand, there are temporary attorneys, as there were in J-M Manufacturing, who are often looking for their next permanent job. On the other, there are permanent attorney managers and workers who are not only expert at document review as a career choice, but also expert in document review in very specific types of cases and for very specific types of customers. Witness our recent announcement of our Mortgage-Backed Securities Taskforce that pulls together over 200 permanent attorneys at our company that have actual experience in this type of complex financial litigation.

Experience comes from working on the same types of cases, but also comes from the context of feeling secure in their roles and engaged by having a comfortable working environment and a respectable career path. This is a 180 degree difference from the situation faced by J-M Manufacturing, and why our customers recently voted us the Best Legal Process Outsourcing Provider in the New York Law Journal’s 2011 Reader Rankings.

In the article “The backroom legal eagles” in The Hindu Business Line (a well respected Indian business newspaper), Gokul Krishnamurthy paints a vivid and very accurate portrait of our people and operations in our Mumbai office in Leela Business Park. I highly recommend reading the entire article for those that have never visited LPO operations in India since it provides such a good description, as well as some great commentary from Sanjay Kamlani, Co-CEO of Pangea3, about the facility, our people, and how we compete.

However, below I will sum up some of the main points of the article which really tells the tale of how Pangea3 uniquely attracts the best people, keeps them and gets the best from each of them:

Inspiring Work Environment: The article describes the work environment and seating arrangements as being open, transparent, inspirational, and supporting a flat hierarchical structure.

Opportunity: The most effective way to keep your top employees and make sure they perform at their best is by providing real opportunity. The article highlights the ascension of Rachita Maker who was brought on to Pangea3 to help build the HR group, but who with experience and opportunity (and her own ambition and intelligence) is now Assistant Vice-President, Corporate Legal Solutions, and is in the U.S. as a subject matter expert helping the sales force with their sales efforts.

Client Contact: With global services and happy clients, Pangea3 has many customers that repeat their business. This means that our employees really get to know the clients’ industries and businesses, and often get to know the main contacts at these firms and companies. Part of the Pangea3 process is constant client contact, for which the whole team participates. That client contact could be weekly team video or audio team calls, or could be travel to the client’s facilities, and even when appropriate, longer term assignments at those facilities.

Work-Life Balance: Workers who want to get ahead have plenty of opportunities at Pangea3 to step up and take on extra work, or work U.S. hours. However, the option to take a “slower lane,” including flexible time schedules, is also available to those workers who have home obligations that are the current priorities in their life.

Feedback & Reward: There is nothing as unsettling to an employee, particularly a professional employee, as not knowing where they stand and how well they are completing their assignments. The article describes the appraisal system built by Pangea3 to provide that constant and constructive feedback, as well as opportunities as “employee of the year” to be recognized among peers for outstanding work.

Personal Growth & Fun: Finally, the article describes how Pangea3 provides both technical growth opportunities to its attorneys, as well as occasions to socialize and have fun as a group, including cricket matches and billiards.

Read Full Article.

In a profile entitled “The Disrupter,” David Perla, the Co-CEO of Pangea3, tells the story of how he and his partner, former law school classmate, and Co-CEO, Sanjay Kamlani, created Pangea3 and how they made it a success, making the right bets and working with the right people. The profile also includes a video of Perla answering the question about if he were in charge of a BigLaw firm, how would he foster growth. It is clear that Perla’s experience in both building a business and being an executive at large corporations – including Monster early in his career and Thomson Reuters now – have influenced the types of strategies he would pursue, which include hiring C-level people from outside the industry and employing a professional salesforce.

The top minds in law – judges, senior lawyers from in-house, firms, and government, plus other respected thought leaders in the profession – discuss the impact of new technology on the legal world at the Legal Technology Leadership Summit taking place on Amelia Island, Florida from September 6-8

Greg McPolin, Vice President and Managing Director for Global Litigation Solutions for Pangea3, will be speaking as part of a panel entitled, “Getting the Right Players at the Table” on September 7. The discussion covers how to ensure the right voices are heard when discussions about corporate commitments regarding the management of electronically stored information take place. Greg joins Mark Herrmann of Aon and Stephanie Mendelsohn of Genentech/Roche, with Hilary Lane of NBC Universal leading the panel.

For more information, check the conference website , or read what Greg has to say about the conference here. You can follow us during the event on Twitter @Pangea3, and be sure to check back here for more following the event.

The discussions at the ILTA 2011 conference are reinforcing a powerful message: the most successful firms of tomorrow will be those that test new strategies and tools today. Kevin Colangelo of Pangea3 discussed how legal process outsourcing can be used by law firms to gain competitive advantage, freeing them to focus on mission-critical functions such as strengthening client relationships and innovating new ways to better serve clients. Chris Trimble of Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business recommended firms take a deliberate approach to innovation, calling for dedicated teams committed to both ideation and incremental improvements that increase efficiency. And a session on “future-proofing” firms covered a variety of new challenges, including the ever-increasing access to information and the growing demand for workforce mobility.

“Rev-Elation” continues through August 25, promising plenty of further insight and debate. Follow along via Twitter using the #ILTA11 hashtag, and check back with us here and on Twitter @Pangea3.

Chief Information Officers and other legal IT professionals have an opportunity to learn more about legal process outsourcing in the evolving legal industry at the 2011 International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) conference, “Rev-Elation.” At “Offshoring and Outsourcing: What It Means for Your Firm and Your Job,” Pangea3 legal expert Kevin Colangelo discusses how outsourcing fits into the legal services marketplace, and how lawyers and technologists can best navigate change in the industry today.

Kevin is a recognized thought leader in the legal industry, advising some of the world’s leading law firms on legal process outsourcing as a Managing Director, Law Firm Relationships for Pangea3. Of the panel, Kevin says, “This will be a great session, as it’s focused on bringing the attendees up to speed on the current state of legal outsourcing as well as guiding them on how to leverage legal outsourcing to further their own careers. We’ll examine the impact of legal process outsourcing on the entirety of the legal industry, including non-attorneys who may perceive LPO as a threat to their careers. We’ll spend time focusing on how LPO fits into the larger, process-focused shifts occurring with respect to the traditional law firm delivery model.”

Toby Brown of Vinson & Elkins, LLP and Jordan Furlong from Edge International Consulting join Kevin in the discussion at 1:00pm on August 22nd. The Offshoring and Outsourcing panel is part of the Information Management focus area at ILTA 2011, and is one of over 200 educational sessions taking place at this year’s event in Nashville, Tennessee. Conference registration is still open, and you can sign up or download more information about the event here.

Can’t attend the conference? Check back with us for the recap following the event. You can also follow Pangea3 @Pangea3 and Kevin Colangelo @Colangelolaw on Twitter, and through the Pangea3 pages on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Being the leader in the LPO industry is not just about providing top-notch legal services. At Pangea3, we provide services and solutions that clients do not expect from a traditional law firm or another legal process outsourcing provider. So, what’s the latest and greatest in the Pangea3 product offerings? Keeping track of the untrackable, or POLICY MAPPING!

A recent case study – here – discusses the compliance challenges that our clients face in today’s highly regulated environment. Take the financial industry, for example. New regulations of increasing breadth and complexity are implemented at breathtaking speed. Before a financial services client can update its internal policies, the rules have changed.

The Pangea3 Policy Mapping Solution maps the applicable regulations – and regulatory changes – against the client’s internal policies, highlighting possible compliance issues. The solution is unique to each client, as each client specifies the classifications and content it requires. Moreover, Pangea3 monitors and alerts the client to regulatory changes as they happen.

Tracking the untrackable? Just another Pangea3 solution.

Read the case. Talk to us today.

Lost in translation? More like “gained in translation,” according to the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists (ACEDS), which interviewed Pangea3 Vice President and Managing Director of Litigation Solutions, Greg McPolin.

In the interview, Greg lauds the top talent that Pangea3 attracts in Mumbai and Delhi from the nation’s best law schools as the key to our success. In Greg’s words, Pangea3 employees are “dedicated,” “conscientious” and “passionate.”

Pressed on why top law school grads choose Pangea3, Greg notes that Pangea3 offers a dedicated career path, a team-centric environment, and the opportunity to interact directly with corporate legal departments and law firms around the globe. Moreover, Greg touts the western-based meritocracy by which Pangea3 operates, allowing employees to advance and excel based on their hard work and dedication. With offices in India’s capital city and most cosmopolitan city (Delhi and Mumbai, respectively), Pangea3 has built a wonderful brand and reputation using the best people, processes and technology culminating in the top quality that Pangea3 clients expect.

But, this story doesn’t begin and end in India. Greg discusses the attractiveness of the legal process outsourcing industry to law school grads in the United States entering a “global,” “innovative,” and “disaggregated” legal industry. For U.S. attorneys who want to be at the forefront of change, and perhaps experience the Indian growth story, Pangea3 offers legal positions in the exciting, fast-growing, LPO industry.

And, lawyers and clients in the U.S. don’t have to move to India to be a part of this story. With a new facility in Dallas, Pangea3 has a domestic base to handle sensitive documents, such as those governed by the export control regime, as well as bolster the 24/7 support that clients expect. And, there is a level of comfort in knowing that you don’t have to leave home to get the top quality services Pangea3 provides.

To hear Greg discuss more about the advantages of Pangea3, tune in here.

What’s on lawyers’ minds when they think about litigation management and associated strategies and tools? The “State of Litigation Management” report, recently released by LexisNexis, sheds light on current beliefs and attitudes held by both corporate and law firm attorneys.

The overview:

• Balancing large amounts of data against budget limitations remains a critical concern.
• Alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) are viewed as important by both corporate and law firm attorneys – and establishing pricing remains the biggest challenge.
• Keeping up with technology is a big issue for both corporate counsel and law firm attorneys, with younger lawyers showing greater interest in staying on top of new developments.
• Legal technology is vital to case analysis – primary examples include accessing data from mobile devices and using technology to organize key documents.

Some details about addressing these challenges:

• 53% of lawyers in firms and corporations find the “review” and “identification” phases of e-discovery to be the most time-consuming.
• 30% of attorneys in large firms “hire third-party vendors” and 20% “hire people” to manage the costs of e-discovery in 2011.
• 86% of lawyers do not consider outsourcing to overseas for e-discovery review as the biggest issue facing the legal industry today.
• 64% of attorneys want to see case analysis tools integrated with litigation document management.

Looking for more information? The full survey report, “State of Litigation Management,” is available for download here.

Were you surprised last week by the major malpractice claim filed against a “Big Law Firm” for “failure to supervise” its contract attorneys—allegedly resulting in the improper production of some 3,900 privileged documents to the federal government? ^[1] If you are anything like us at Pangea3—and you have worked diligently for years to develop and refine processes to prevent just such a situation—then this lawsuit came as no surprise. If you—inexplicably—have had other things on your mind for the past decade, continue reading on to ensure this fate does not befall you.

As reported by The American Lawyer, this malpractice case not only highlights outside counsel’s ethical duty to meaningfully supervise its agents, but demonstrates the potential consequences of failing to do so. The article notes that “while it’s understood that lawyers need to supervise vendors, the standards for that supervision remain imprecise.” At Pangea3 we agree: that’s why we have rigorously studied all available ethical guidance and have worked to establish procedures which—we believe—ensure supervision well outside of any grey area. See, e.g., ABA Formal Opinion 08-451, Lawyer’s Obligations When Outsourcing Legal and Nonlegal Support Services, Aug. 5, 2008 (providing ethical guidance and describing legal outsourcing as a “salutary” trend in our globalized economy).

So how does Pangea3 ensure that outside counsel in our cases provide supervision above and beyond the requirements set forth by these “imprecise” ethical authorities? We achieve this via overlapping processes in which our outside counsel partners are required to:

1. draft the review “playbook,” with input from Pangea3’s experienced consultants, which becomes the bible of the review process for our attorneys;
2. lead the initiating “kickoff” call, which walks our reviewing attorneys through the “playbook” and numerous example documents;
3. respond in real-time to specially crafted “escalation emails” created by experienced reviewers and circulated almost daily, which distill open review issues to their most basic elements. This body of decisions by outside counsel regarding borderline documents creates a constant flow of knowledge transfer between our reviewers and outside counsel, and becomes something akin to an easy to follow “law of the case” that the review team’s first line reviewers follow, and that the “quality checkers” must use to ensure results are consistent.

These methods, and others like them, seamlessly integrate outside counsel into our process from the beginning to the end of each review. They also ensure that outside counsel necessarily exercises meaningful supervision over our review teams.

Furthermore, Pangea3 is the best in the business at ensuring review accuracy. We achieve this uniquely high accuracy by: (1)hiring talented, full-time attorneys after a rigorous vetting process including background checks; (2)providing our attorneys with a clear professional career track; (3) investing heavily in our employees’ development with thorough, rigorous training; (4) providing leadership by U.S. litigators experienced in e-discovery, both on the ground in India, and in the U.S.; (5) utilizing Six Sigma-inspired methods to report on and eliminate errors; and (6) quality-checking, which is more thorough than any other review company—on- or off-shore—we are aware of. Our model does not turn on cutting corners to go faster; rather, our processes ensure that our obsession with quality does not impede our efficiency.

Finally, we adopt a risk-averse approach to privilege review, which locates and codes for “potentially privileged” documents rather than outright privileged ones, and requires a second-level review by outside counsel in order to yield a final privileged set.

If your provider is not making document review this safe and easy for you, maybe it is time to get to know Pangea3.

Reference and Endnote

[1] Company Alleges E-Discovery Malpractice by McDermott

Co-CEO David Perla likes to say that “Pangea3 has never been about where work gets done. It’s about how it gets done.” Witness the new Pangea3 Dallas office. Demonstrating our commitment to delivering comprehensive solutions that our clients want and need, the recently opened delivery center in Dallas will offer solutions across all of our service lines. It is an integral part of our multiple centers of excellence strategy, which will allow us to staff projects based on the needs of the customer to a degree not possible before.

The New York Times broke news of the office today, calling it “a glimmer of light” for recent graduates of U.S. law schools. The article includes photos from the Dallas office and quotes from co-CEO Sanjay Kamlani, Lily Liu, an attorney in the Dallas office, and Kirit Amichandwala, a senior manager in our Mumbai office, who spent time in Dallas getting our attorneys there up to speed with our Pangea3 processes.

What to expect from our Dallas office:

Pangea3 Processes: The same high-quality, process-driven and high-touch client service that clients have come to expect from the Pangea3 offices in Mumbai and Delhi.

Greatly Expanded Workday: A follow-the-sun workflow model for a number of the Pangea3 offerings.

Strategic Alternative: Efficiency and savings for clients who may be new to legal process outsourcing as a strategic alternative to doing tasks such as document review in-house

Export Control Issues Solved: Employees in the new office are able to take on tasks that clients – including law firm clients – want to source externally, but involve matters that by law have to be managed and performed in the United States.

Read the New York Times article highlighting our Dallas office.

As corporations and law firms know only too well, choosing the wrong provider for document review can be a costly mistake. The intersection of technology and more demanding judicial requirements for data preservation has led to a sharp increase in the volume of expensive and time-consuming document review associated with litigation—but no one has parsed the options, giving guidance to those trying to choose a document review provider. Enter Pangea3. In our upcoming webinar, You Get What You Pay For: Strategies to Help You Select the Best Document Review Provider, experts will discuss practical methods of selecting a document review provider who can best help keep litigation costs manageable, while adhering to deadlines and accuracy.

One of the experts will be Greg McPolin Esq., our Vice President and Managing Director, Litigation Solutions—whose career has, for many years, centered on consulting with clients to reduce the costs of e-discovery and document review. The webinar is free of charge and will be held Tuesday, June 7th at 2 p.m. EDT. Register here.

Daily News and Analysis recently interviewed co-CEO Sanjay Kamlani about changes we might see in the LPO industry this year

Sanjay mentions that “work related to regulatory compliance has increased tremendously,” Pangea3 has lately seen activity escalate in this area. Sanjay says that numerous Indian IT and BPO players are looking to invest in the LPO industry as “they view LPO as opportunities to go up the value chain and add a new vertical.” With margins between 15% and 30%, it is no surprise that everyone is now viewing LPO as an excellent investment opportunity.

Sanjay also explains that even though Pangea3 lawyers do not work for Indian clients, legal process outsourcing has expanded the horizons of legal experts in India. While in the past Indian lawyers did not travel overseas, Pangea3 provides opportunities to its employees to travel and work abroad.

Read full article.

Sanjay Kamlani is used to thinking globally about all aspects of his business. So it’s not surprising that in an interview about employee training with ItsMyAscent.com, part of the Times of India, he emphasizes his belief that corporate training should be heading towards culture training with a focus on cross-cultural communication. Sanjay says that with “globalization and the cross-cultural nature of teams and client/provider relationships,” the current standard of culture training is “only the tip of the iceberg.” In-depth research on themes like “Power Distance Index, individualism vs. collectivism, long-term vs. short-term orientation, uncertainty avoidance etc”are becoming more important and will enable trainees to successfully interact with their counterparts and clients across the globe.

Read full article here.

If you’ve ever been curious about the faces behind Pangea3, now is your chance to take peak behind the scenes. We recently filmed a video that features employees in both India and the United States. In addition to great footage of our Mumbai office, the video includes snippets from interviews with Pangeans across the company.

After the intro, the video looks at the synergy between Pangea3 and Thomson Reuters, including interviews with executive leadership in both Pangea3 and Thomson Reuters. It segues into the vision that drives Pangea3 and the methods we use to add value for our clients. Finally, since “Pangea3 is fundamentally a company made up of people” (as David Perla, co-CEO says in the video), it finishes with the flavor of Pangea3—the company culture so important to both clients and employees.

To view the video, click here. Enjoy!

Greg McPolin, Vice President and Managing Director, Litigation Solutions, and Ken Nourse, Director, Litigation Solutions will be in San Francisco April 28 and 29, where Pangea3 is sponsoring the 11th eDiscovery Summit West Coast. Both interactive sessions and expert panels are part of the program, which is designed so that pretty much anyone in a corporation with a role that touches e-discovery can come away with a sophisticated understanding of essential cost and risk management methods. It especially emphasizes relationship development between IT and Legal departments.

Ken is speaking on a panel Thursday, immediately after the Keynote address, in an extended panel, “What Can An Effective eDiscovery Team Do For Your Company?” focusing on building an effective e-discovery team. Specifically, Ken will cover the efficiencies that partnering with a legal process outsourcing can create in the most expensive part of the EDRM, document review.

For more information about this conference click here.

It’s no secret that Pangea3 has become the industry leader among legal process outsourcing firms worldwide. But how did Pangea3 rise from a fledgling company to the industry leader to the latest acquisition of a renowned global corporation – all in the span of 6 years? Watch Antony Alex, Managing Director Legal Solutions, Pangea3, discuss the secrets to success as part of the CommSec Entrepreneur Series hosted by Boardroom Radio.

Antony, an experienced corporate and commercial lawyer, was approached at an early stage by Sanjay Kamlani and David Perla, the visionaries and co-CEOs behind Pangea3. According to Antony, Pangea3 overcame the two biggest hurdles to success in the LPO industry – attracting top Indian talent and convincing clients to entrust their sensitive legal work – by investing in the people, processes, systems and technology to produce cost-competitive legal services without compromising on the highest standards of quality.

On the sale of the company to Thomson Reuters, Antony admits that as the industry leader Pangea3 had numerous options for sale and acquisition. But Thomson Reuters was a natural fit because of their shared values of honesty, transparency, and integrity. In one word, Antony sums up the best way to run a successful company: ETHICALLY.

And what does Antony see for the post-acquisition future of Pangea3? In his words, “I would personally like to see us get to about 3000 attorneys [from 550] in 5 years, which would probably make us the largest employer of lawyers in the world . . . .” How’s that for a growth story!

Watch the video.

On Friday, April 22, 2011, Sanjay Kamlani, co-CEO of Pangea3, will speak at the Penn Club of Mumbai’s Spring Event “Entrepreneurship in India.” The Penn Club organizes events in Mumbai for its alumni, which include many senior executives and industry leaders, to connect and discuss matters of mutual interest. As the co-founder and co-CEO of Pangea3, Sanjay will share his experiences of navigating the company through the Indian outsourcing industry from a start-up to the industry leader.

Sanjay graduated from Penn Law in 1994. After obtaining his law degree, he held senior positions at PricewaterhouseCoopers and Office Tiger, where he was the CFO & General Counsel. Sanjay brought a decade of experience in legal and professional services to the founding of Pangea3 in 2004. Since then, Pangea3 has grown into the world’s largest legal process outsourcing (LPO) company through the guidance and vision of Sanjay and his co-CEO, David Perla, also a graduate of Penn Law.

The panel discussion will begin at 7:00 p.m. at The Hemant Room of the Four Seasons Hotel in Worli, Mumbai. Sanjay will be joined on the panel by Penn alumni: Arvind Rao, co-Founder and CEO, OnMobile; Rana Kapoor, Founder and MD, YES Bank; and Sunit Mehra, Managing Partner, Hunt Partners. Eduardo Glandt, Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, will make a special guest appearance. Cocktails will follow the discussion.

After the first Annual Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists conference (which was terrific—see Meet Pangea3’s Litigation Solutions Team at ACEDS below), we thought conference locations couldn’t get any better. Then Jonathan Goldstein, Marilyn Primiano and Dave Garrett signed on to represent Pangea3 at the Emptoris Empower Europe conference—located at the Hotel Arts in Barcelona, over 100 executives from Global 2000 companies will attend this dynamic supply, spend and contract management conference taking place April 5-7. Seven keynote addresses and over twenty educational sessions will provide expert insight, industry benchmarks, best practices and practical approaches to solution adoption.

Interspersed with the two days of uncovering the most effective strategies to reduce costs, mitigate risks and maximize organization efficiency, will be plenty of time for networking and cocktails. If you’re interested in attending the conference or would like to learn more about it, click here.

See Pangea3’s Co-Founder and Co-CEO David Perla provide the essential criteria for how to choose your offshore legal outsourcing provider. He spoke at a Feb. 23, 2011, Martindale® Connected Webinar titled Legal Process Outsourcing: Ethics & Efficacy. In this video clip, Perla enumerates key criteria for choosing whether to and where to offshore legal work, including:

• Language
• Type of legal system
• Size of local attorney population
• Type of economy
• Type of government
• Willingness of government to invest in infrastructure and technology
• And other more subtle characteristics

For more information about our legal solutions, get in touch with us through our corporate site, or write to info@pangea3.com.

Part of Pangea3’s Litigation Solutions team will be at the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists (ACEDS) annual conference, held March 23-25 in Hollywood, FL (how lucky are they!). For their first annual conference, ACEDS has created a program of workshops, seminars, panels and beachside receptions completely dedicated to e-discovery.

Pradeep Victor, Assistant Vice President, Litigation Solutions, and a respected thoughtleader in the field of e-discovery, will be part of the program, speaking on What the Future Holds for Predictive Coding and Defensible Searches - Learn it Now, from 1:30-2:45 p.m. on Thursday, March 24. Also representing Pangea3 at the conference will be Greg McPolin, Vice President and Managing Director, Litigation Solutions and Karen Paurus, Director, Litigation Solutions.

Pangea3 is a charter affiliate member of ACEDS, which strives to certify, educate and connect e-discovery professionals. For more information about the ACEDS annual conference, click here.

On Wednesday, March 9, Pangea3 co-CEO David Perla is taking part in Welcome to the Future: Trends in the Delivery of Corporate Legal Services, an intensive one-day conference put on by the Georgetown University Law Center, Center for the Study of the Legal Profession, and the Association of Corporate Counsel. The conference has collected in-house counsel, service providers and academics to provide their insights on the relationship between corporate legal departments and outside service providers.

From 3:34-5:00 David will be speaking on Innovation in the Legal Services Supply Chain, a panel dedicated to discussing the conditions that foster innovation and creativity, methods service providing teams can use to maximize performance in delivery to clients and arrangements that coordinate the work of multiple types of service providers.

Moderating the panel will be Peter Zeughauser, Chair of the Zeughauser Group. Also on the panel with David will be: Reena SenGupta, Financial Times Innovative Awards and Chief Executive, RSG Consulting; Heidi Gardner, Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School Professor; and Rees Morrison, President, General Counsel Metrics, LLC.

A brief conclusion speech and cocktail reception will follow Innovation in the Legal Services Supply Chain. For more information, click here.

This spring, Pangea3 and the New York Law Journal will host a legal process outsourcing webinar series. Our three webinars are geared towards in-house and outside counsel and are all about preparing lawyers for the new legal normal. Each webinar will look at LPO from a different angle and will prepare lawyers with the information they need to approach and fully utilize an LPO provider.

The first webinar will be Thursday, March 3 at 11:00 a.m. EST, entitled Ethics and Legal Process Outsourcing. Pangea3 co-CEO David Perla, Esq., is presenting with two attorneys currently at law firms: Stuart Levi, Partner at Skadden, and Michael Downey, Partner at Hinshaw and Culbertson. No law firm or company wants to face ethical violations, and it’s important that as more lawyers start using LPO, they get familiar with the ethical guidelines that inform the practice. All three panelists are ethics experts, and will cover need-to-know ethics topics including: confidentiality, conflicts, disclosure to clients, billing practices and unauthorized practice of law. CLE Ethics credit will be available to those in the jurisdictions of California, Illinois and New York.

The next webinar is Best Practices in Legal Process Outsourcing, at 11:00 a.m. EST on Tuesday, March 29. Our Vice President and Managing Director of Litigation Solutions, Greg McPolin, Esq. will join a panel examining the significant competitive advantages of working with an LPO. An outsourcing thoughtleader, Greg is closely acquainted with the proven strategies and best practices that make LPO deliver in numerous situations, and has recommended strategies that have worked for companies and law firms time and time again.

Appropriately, our final webinar is entitled The Future of Law in the Era of Legal Process Outsourcing. At 11:00 a.m. EST on Tuesday, April 26, Kevin Colangelo, Esq., Pangea3’s Vice President and Managing Director, Law Firm Relationships, and two others will take the lead on parsing where the legal industry is heading. They will examine the next phase of legal outsourcing, including LPO centers of excellence, law firm adoption of LPO and LPO engagement models.

For more information on these webinars or to register, click here.

Pangea3 co-CEO Sanjay Kamlani will be in London next week for the Global LPO Conference at the Waldorf Hilton, March 2-March 3. One of the conference’s first speakers, Sanjay will present on How the LPO Industry Is Relevant for U.K./European Buyers at 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday. His presentation will cover the why and how of offshoring, business models and the future of the LPO industry, among other topics.

Hosted by KPO Consultants, the same group that put on last November’s very successful Delhi Global LPO Conference 2010, where Sanjay was one of the main speakers, Global LPO Conference 2011 will also focus on connecting executives, in-house counsel and law firm attorneys, with highly relevant information on LPO. Designed so that attendees can gather the applicable information they need on LPO, the conference contains not only panel presentations, but also workshops, case studies, one-on-one meetings and strategic topical sessions.

Visit event website for additional event information.

Pangea3 co-CEO David Perla will be part of a particularly informative webinar Wednesday, February 23. Entitled, “Legal Process Outsourcing: Ethics and Efficacy,” the core of the panel will be the ethics of legal process outsourcing, covering the ABA ethics opinion on legal process outsourcing, and some of the other major ethics opinions—all need-to-know information if you are considering engaging a legal process outsourcing provider. But in addition, LPO client Patrick Eckhert, Director, Indirect Procurement, Cardinal Health, will discuss his own experiences with using legal process outsourcing to make his business more efficient. Along with their CLE credit (the webinar is eligible for 1 CLE credit in 36 states), participants will get a first-hand view of what it’s like to successfully use LPO to make your business more efficient. Also on the panel will be a legal process outsourcing expert from the law firm side, Edward Reich, Esq., Deputy General Counsel, SNR Denton US LLP.

The webinar will be from 2:00-3:30 ET on February 23 and available online after that. It is free, and you can register for it here.

Pangea3 celebrated its sixth anniversary on February 1—and in the past year, we’ve really grown!

Our team has grown across the business. Currently we have 700 attorneys between Mumbai and Delhi—double what we had a year ago. In February 2010, our Delhi office was a small satellite office; today, it equals the Mumbai headquarters in size and expertise. In the United States we now have employees across the country.

We were ranked LPO of the Year by India Business Law Journal, and recognized as a top legal process outsourcing provider in multiple categories. We were recognized on the Inc. Magazine 500/5000 list as one of the fastest growing companies in America. Pangea3 was also covered in the international media, including Bloomberg TV, the Economist, the New York Times, the Times Ascent, Building Magazine, the American Lawyer, Lawyers Weekly and Economic Times.

Recent U.S. law graduates should take note of the anti-outsourcing legislation filed by Connecticut State Representative Pat Dillon. According to Rep. Dillon, she intends to keep “legal doc review” from being offshored to overseas workers where “legal work is being done abroad with no quality oversight.” Never mind that legal process offshoring firms, like Pangea3, have the resources and expertise to handle enormous document review requests more effectively and efficiently than a handful of first-year associates crowded around a conference table in New York or Los Angeles.

As legal blogger Lisa Solomon discusses in her blog post Why Connecticut Shouldn’t Ban Legal Process Offshoring: “this sloppily drafted bill (“legal document review” is a completely different animal than drafting legal documents or conducting legal research, which are also encompassed by the bill’s language) ignores the substantial body of principled analysis of the issues surrounding legal outsourcing in favor of facile protectionism that won’t cure the legal profession’s real ills.” Solomon continues “the vast majority of U.S. legal jobs that have disappeared in the last few years were lost due to the poor economy, not because the firms that aren’t hiring (or that eliminated positions) sent legal work offshore. Protectionism won’t bring those jobs back…” Moreover, as Solomon notes, Rep. Dillon ignores the fact that the hiring attorney in the U.S. is ultimately responsible for “quality oversight.”

Fortunately for those law grads and the legal process outsourcing industry, anti-outsourcing legislation makes for better press releases than politics. Similar legislation was debated by the Connecticut House of Representatives in 2003 but died in the Senate Judiciary Committee. In 2007, the National Foundation for American Policy released a report finding a reduction in state legislation to restrict global sourcing from a peak in 2004. Last September, the “Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act,” anti-outsourcing legislation proposed in the United States Senate, failed a cloture motion even as Members of Congress were heading home to campaign for the midterm elections.

With a high unemployment rate and changed political landscape, the U.S. is under increased pressure to improve its competitiveness in the world. In his State of the Union address, President Obama focused on improving education and encouraging innovation in energy and technology but avoided any direct references to outsourcing. Proponents of the legal process outsourcing industry herald last Friday’s appointment of General Electric Co. CEO Jeffrey Immelt, dubbed the “King of Outsourcing” in the conservative blogosphere, as a top economic advisor to the President. It remains to be seen how the Obama Administration will address the burgeoning demand for services provided by companies like Pangea3.

Meet the Pangea3 U.S. Litigation Team at LegalTech New York next week. The conference will be held at the Hilton New York Hotel from January 31 to February 2. As the region’s leading legal technology event and trade show, LegalTech New York will present best practices and innovative methods of managing the practice of law using cutting-edge technology solutions, tools and services. Apart from keynote presentations and technology sessions, the conference program includes networking forums, seminars and workshops on issues and challenges facing the industry today. The program is eligible for up to 20 CLE credits with 1.5 ethics credit and 7 complementary CLE credits in multiple states including New Jersey.

Pangea3 executives will be available throughout the show at Booth #209 to discuss the company’s legal outsourcing solutions.

Visit the event website for more information.