2. What kind of cost savings can be expected by outsourcing legal to India?

Outsourcing legal work to India, can result in savings of up to 50% or more.  As The New York Times reported: “The reason for the shift [to outsourcing legal work] echoes the reason companies are sending other work abroad: they save substantial amounts of money. Some companies say they can reduce certain legal costs by as much as 50 percent, and receive work that rivals what they can obtain in the United States.  According to Dennis Archer, the President of the American Bar Association, ‘The need to cut costs reaches across many departments, so it should be no surprise that it goes to the legal department as well.’” 

The financial advantages of legal outsourcing to India that can accrue to the clients of SDD Global are seen not only in the well-known differences between salaries and costs of living among the workforces of the U.S. and India, but also in the price of office space, which is ultimately paid for by a law firm’s clients. Many traditional law firms locate virtually all of their personnel in relatively expensive offices in the largest cities in the United States and the United Kingdom. This tradition has led to a situation in which most of each dollar or pound that these firms charge their clients pays for office rent.  In Mysore, India, the employees of SDD Global work in state-of-the-art facilities at 1/43rd the cost of comparable space in major U.S. cities (and at far lower cost than Indian cities such as Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi/Gurgaon). This is a major part of the way we maintain our assurance to clients that they are paying for legal services, not real estate.

3. What is the relationship between SmithDehn LLP and SDD Global Solutions? Do SDD Global attorneys practice law or provide legal advice?

SDD Global Solutions is a separate Indian company. Although attorneys at SmithDehn LLP play an important role in the management, supervision, and training at SDD Global, the Indian company is not a captive of any one law firm. Instead, SDD Global provides services to multiple law firms, and to many corporate and other clients who are not clients of SmithDehn. SDD Global provides many of the same services of a global law firm, often with both higher quality and lower rates, but SDD Global is not a law firm. It does not "practice law" or provide legal advice. However, in those situations where clients need legal advice, or representation in court, or similar services that only a U.S.-licensed attorney can provide, those clients can obtain such services from SmithDehn and/or other law firms working with SDD Global.Click here to read the opinions of various U.S. ethics panels on legal outsourcing. These include American Bar Association Ethics Opinion 08-451, which states that (a) "U.S. lawyers are free to outsource legal work, including to lawyers or nonlawyers outside the country, if they adhere to [various] ethics rules," (b) legal outsourcing is "a salutary trend in a global economy," and (c) "outsourcing can reduce client costs and enable small firms to provide labor intensive services such as large, discovery intense litigation, even though the firms might not maintain sufficient ongoing staff to handle the work.