That means more routine work like legal research, due diligence and document review is being done in India at roughly half the cost as in the U.S., outsourcers say. Starting associates at big U.S. firms often bill more than $200 an hour. But an experienced lawyer in India bills at $75 to $100 an hour, roughly the bottom rate for some U.S. paralegals.I can imagine that in the near future, medical care will entail the patient being hooked up to a diagnostic machine by a cheap Mexican nurse and the results will be analyzed long-distance by an Indian doctor.Legal outsourcing in India currently draws around $250 million in annual revenue, analysts estimate. That's a tiny portion of the $40 billion in revenue for India's technology-outsourcing firms. But legal outsourcing is growing quickly, while tech-outsourcing firms are struggling to grow. [...]
Forrester Research Inc., Cambridge, Mass., estimates that 35,000 U.S. legal jobs will be moved offshore by 2010 and 79,000 will move by 2015. That's a small portion of the 1.2 million licensed lawyers in the U.S. as of June, according to the American Bar Association. But hiring is down now for junior lawyers in the U.S. as firms struggle with declining demand, says Michael Short, a law-firm consultant with Hildebrandt International Inc. [With Times Tight, Even Lawyers Get Outsourced, Wall Street Journal, November 26, 2008]
Indian radiologists already interpret x-rays.
