New York Law Journal, NY
18/05/2005
A Gateway to India?
Philadelphia IP lawyers mull offshore outsourcing of legal work
Jeff Blumenthal
The Legal Intelligencer
05-18-2005

Ronald Panitch has fielded his share of cold-call pitches from vendors during his 40 years of practicing intellectual property law. But one he received last week included an eye-opening business proposition.
The offered service was a team of 80 lawyers who could handle legal research, document review, patent proofreading and litigation support for between one-third and half the price of using American paralegals.
The catch is the cold call was an e-mail sent from halfway across the globe. The company in question, Manthan Services, is based in Bangalore, India, and would be doing the work while Panitch and his colleagues from Akin Gump Straus Hauer & Feld are sleeping.
Outsourcing legal work to India, particularly in intellectual property practice, is a trend that began at American law firms and in-house legal departments roughly two years ago. But it has not yet caught on in the Philadelphia legal community.
"Could they craft a patent application overseas?" Panitch said. "Yes. But I wouldn't want to be the pioneer. Over time, they might learn how things are done over here. I just don't want the first car off that assembly line."
"I know some companies look at it as a way to control costs but I'm reluctant to be the guinea pig," Drinker Biddle & Reath intellectual property chairman Gregory Lavorgna said.
While firms expressed reluctance to use Indian companies, a much-cited report from Forrest Research of Cambridge, Mass., predicts that roughly 8 percent of American jobs in the legal profession will have shifted abroad by 2015.
Nowhere is the outsourcing trend more prevalent than India, which has more than 200 million English-speaking, college-educated citizens, according to Leon Steinberg, a Minnesota-based entrepreneur who started an outsourcing company called Intellevate two years ago.
Intellevate handles paralegal work largely in patent prosecution matters, with more than 100 employees based in India and another 40 in the United States. He said the company's team of lawyers and scientists work with American in-house and law firm clients on patent applications, handling illustrations and proofreading, as well as technical marketplace intelligence.
Steinberg said Intellevate has between 25 and 30 American clients, with 60 percent being corporations and 40 percent law firms. He said one Philadelphia law firm is a client but the firm does not wish to have its name released to the media. Most Intellevate clients, Steinberg said, are based in Silicon Valley, though Microsoft, which is based in suburban Seattle, is probably the most prominent.
"At first we would get clients because of cost issues," Steinberg said. "But they stay with us for cost, capacity and expertise. We can spend two or three times as long doing research and still come in at half the price of American paralegals. So we can afford more quality control mechanisms and invest more into training."
Most firms with IP practice said they have been solicited by firms or companies that do outsourced legal work. The only one to admit to using one is Woodcock Washburn, Philadelphia's largest IP boutique.