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Redundancies caused by Outsourcing?

A Hertfordshire firm dealing with personal injury law work issued a press release recently to the Law Society Gazette to say that they are setting up a law firm in South Africa to handle personal injury cases at low cost. The Law Society Gazette talks about this new ground and almost hinting at it being the way for out sourcing in the future.

It’s amazing that this continues to be a story, as the firm in question have been peddling these ideas for years, and if you look back through the Law Society Gazette they have featured fairly regularly over the years for promoting outsourcing. Every time something else happens the Law Society jump on it and publish a story, which probably does not reflect the reality very much at all.

I suspect this is a case of the LSG being duped by PR into running a headline story...

I cannot see what the difference is and why this story has made particularly the front page of the Law Society Gazette as it appears to do nothing but advertise the firm of solicitors as opposed to being any particular news worthy item.

There are plenty of firms in the UK using low cost solutions with paralegals being the preferred operatives these days for any firm undertaking personal injury work. There have been few opportunities for personal injury solicitors for many years, and the market has slowly decreased downhill to being open pretty much for anyone with a law degree and a book. I am not sure how much difference a South African operation will make, and remain dubious that this is not going to be a particular successful venture that has in any way progressed the shape of the legal profession in the UK...

Outsourcing has been going on for many years with firms for example who have an operation centre in the UK, outsourcing a lot of the conveyancing work to Indian operatives. Indeed, conveyancers have gone to India to oversee the departments and set things up there.

Jonathan Fagan is Managing Director of Ten Percent Legal Recruitment and can be contacted at cv@ten-percent.co.uk or 02071274343.

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