JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.
Globalisation of Commodification: Legal Process Outsourcing and Indian Lawyers

PERMANENT LINK(S)
Metadata
Show full item recordAuthor
Noronha, Ernesto; D'Cruz, Premilla; Kuruvilla, Sarosh
Abstract
Legal process outsourcing (LPO) refers to the contracting of legal work from regions where it is costly to perform, such as the US to areas where it can be performed at a significantly decreased cost. LPO has been made possible by the disaggregation of the legal processes into discrete units, each of which can then outsourced to cheaper service providers. Anecdotal evidence suggests a variety of benefits such as financial gains, opportunities to perform “global” work in a corporate atmosphere and acquisition of important skills and training that enhances the prestige of the host country lawyers. In India, which has played a significant role, LPO firms are viewed as important catalysts in the transformation of the country’s highly stratified legal profession based on social identities. This qualitative study, based on 38 interviews, concludes that the corporate culture was an attractive proposition for lawyers from non-elite backgrounds; however, the commodification of offshored work led to a deprofessionalisation of lawyers, reducing them to “glorified clerks.” As a result, LPO firms only provided parallel
venues for career mobility but did not destabilise the local legal market which at its core remains socially networked.
Description
Copyright held by the authors.
Date Issued
2016-03-09Publisher
Routledge
Subject
commodification; globalisation; India; lawyers; legal process outsourcing; professions
Related DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2016.1157885Previously Published As
Journal of Contemporary Asia, 46(4), pp. 614-640.
Type
article
Accessibility Feature
alternative text; bookmarks; highContractDisplay; reading order; structural navigation; tagged PDF
Accessibility Hazard
none
Accessibility Summary
Accessible pdf