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As you drive up from Akshaya Bhandar on Panchamantra road in Kuvempungar, on the left you will notice a new shiny elegant building with a well dressed security guard. That's SDD Global Solutions Pvt. Ltd. — a place which solves legal woes of Hollywood big-wigs. SDD stands for Smith Dornan Dehn, a New York based media and intellectual property firm. Their website compliments Mysore by stating “SDD Global is headquartered in the ideal business location of Mysore, away from India's congested and increasingly costly major cities, but near to major Universities and law schools that provide a steady supply of enthusiastic talent”. Star of Mysore sat down with Russell Smith, the President and Chairman, along with his colleague Sanjay Bhatia, Head of Operations, to talk about LPO (legal process outsourcing) and how they are managing to make Law a very profitable profession here in India... and, of course, Hollywood.
SOM: What exactly is legal process outsourcing?
Russell: First off we don't want to call it outsourcing. Outsourcing is being spoken about as if it were a new concept, when it’s not. It has been around for a very long time, and in fact, every time a company hires a law firm, it is outsourcing legal work. What is happening now is off-shoring.
Legal off-shoring is basically providing support to clients from another viable location, overseas. Here in Mysore, we provide legal research material, legal drafting, legal analysis, documentation, case management, and some form filling.
Basically everything a law firm and their clients need, from knowledge-based work such as research to a seemingly mundane activity like form filling. In fact, the little form filling we do is not mundane – it requires knowledge and skill, and it can get a little confusing at times. |
SOM: How did you come up with the idea?
Russell: I have been coming to Mysore for a few years now to learn Ashtanga yoga from Pattabhi Jois and his family, and I love the city. After I went back to the US, I had to prepare a lot of subpoenas in hurry, and I could not find anyone available at my law firm. Out of sheer desperation I called a local student in Mysore whom I had met during my stay here and asked him if he could do the work, if I provided him all the information. He agreed, and when I asked him what his charges were, he hesitantly said 1 dollar an hour. I couldn’t believe it, 1 dollar an hour!! Back in the US, we would have paid many times that, if we could find someone to do the work. So I decided to off-shore this kind of activity to a more doable and cost-effective location.
SOM: Why Mysore?
Russell: Quite a few reasons actually, first cost, then the city itself. It is a good city to work in. And finally the talent pool.
SOM: So have you been able to get good people ?
Russell: Yes, from both Mysore and its surrounding areas. We have nearly 40 employees from Mysore, Coorg and even Bangalore. Now people are streaming in from Delhi and Mumbai.
SOM: Does off-shoring raise the issue of Cost Vs. Quality?
With us, the quality of work is just as good as it is in the United States or even better. If we tell our client in the US that we'll do some job for 1/5th the cost but the quality of work cannot be guaranteed, they'll just end the meeting on the spot. No one wants to cut costs at the expense of quality, when it comes to legal work.
Most of our people here are very well qualified and efficient, and we have very good training programs. In fact, we are almost like a US law school. Once you are with us, you will end up learning the US laws very well.
SOM: So are you looking to mainly hire laywers?
Sanjay: Not really, of course for most of the core team, which is into research and other areas of expertise, we hire lawyers, but others not necessarily. We have lots of work for non-lawyers here too.
Russell: In all the time I spent in Mysore and in India I realized that every parent wanted their child to become either a doctor or a computer engineer. Everything else seemed to be viewed as a non-viable profession. With SDD Global Solutions, we want to prove that it’s not true. We want to show how being a lawyer can be a very viable profession.
In fact our pay scale is higher than some famous IT companies. The market for LPO is only going to grow. Right now the market is worth more than $100 billion, and only a minuscule part of this business is being off-shored now.
SOM: What are you expansion plans?
We are planning to have another floor, that hopefully can increase our strength to more than 500 people. We are also looking for land, but every two months the prices are increasing, so it’s hard to buy. Mysore it seems might have a glut of office spaces as buildings are built but are empty, so hopefully prices will go down. We also plan to hire close to 5000 people in the next five years or so.
SOM: Who are your clients ?
Lot of media companies, like 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, etc., and also major retailers like Calvin Klein and several large book publishers. We are taking care of legal problems with last year’s hit, Borat. We are right now working on a movie starring Al Pacino. We do a lot of legal research for movie studios, by which I mean we and our U.S. law firm parent basically tell them if the movie they plan to make is going to run into serious trouble or not. We tell them which part of the movie might be a problem in which part of the world or which state. We let them know what kind of cases they might have to fight, and how much we can defend them, and if the case can be won.
This is very important as the studios decide to give the green signal for production based on this research and analysis, coupled with advice from the U.S. lawyers that manage our operation.
This kind of work costs somewhere between $30-90 an hour in India whereas in the US, the studios would have to pay close to $200-700 an hour.
We also work with cable networks and TV channels such as HBO and Channel 4 Television.
SOM: Coming to the fun part, we heard you have a movie night every Friday, but is it always a movie that has to do with law ?
Oh, no that's not true, we have other movies too, but they usually tend to have some issue that involves law. Today we are watching the Ali G series. It has not much to do with law, but then we are working on his cases, so there is a connection.
SOM: Finally what 3 movies do you think will inspire a student to purse a career in law?
I would say The Verdict, starring Paul Newman is a very inspiring movie and then my favourite, To Kill A Mockingbird, the film that launched a million law school applications in America. Finally, I would say Erin Brockovich. |
