California's economy is highly diversified, with workers and businesses in virtually every industry sector. California's largest industry sectors are trade, transportation, and utilities, which encompass everything from major retail outlets, to import-export businesses, to warehousing. Other major non-governmental industries include professional and business services, educational and health services, manufacturing and information, which includes motion picture production, broadcasting, and Internet businesses.

Recently, in an effort to survive the economic recession, California's corporations, businesses (including the litigation-bound media and entertainment industry), law firms and individuals have turned to India for legal services. India is the fastest growing hub for legal off-shoring. The economic viability and cost savings of legal services outsourcing is immense. "Legal Process Outsourcing" or "LPO" has gained momentum in recent years. SDD Global Solutions, the only legal outsourcing services provider in India managed by an American law firm, provides numerous offshored legal services to various clients in California including in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Fresno, Sacramento, Long Beach and West Hollywood.

SDD Global in India offers high-quality legal work at significantly lower cost. The low cost of SDD Global's legal services can be illustrated as follows: By relying exclusively on a large law firm in California, a client would incur very high legal costs, since legal fees indirectly include, among other things, high real estate costs, and since large law firms are often located in some of the most expensive office spaces in California. By contrast, SDD Global's state-of-the-art office located in Mysore, India is 1/43rd times less expensive per square foot than most office space in California, especially Los Angeles. SDD Global therefore can offer high-quality legal services at flat rates and hourly rates that are a fraction of the cost of the hourly rates charged by California lawyers (between $300-2000 per hour). The bulk of the work is done by outstanding Indian attorneys at SDD Global, supervised by our U.S. licensed attorneys, which tremendously reduces our clients' legal costs.

Offshoring of legal services to SDD Global is advantageous not only because of cost benefits, but also because of the high quality of the work. SDD Global always has provided, and is a pioneer in providing, high-quality, efficient, and timely legal services through its very enthusiastic and qualified lawyers. SDD Global has also proven itself by providing services with a quicker turnaround time.

At SDD Global our India legal associates are trained by first-rate US lawyers. 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. SDD Global provides services in various areas of law such as, contract law, corporate law, entertainment law, state and federal litigation, bankruptcy law, torts and intellectual property rights (patents, trademarks and copyrights).

SDD Global's legal services include legal research, drafting of commercial contracts and litigation papers, applications for U.S. and U.K. immigration visas, intellectual property services, and a whole host of other high-value work.

The issue of whether the high-end legal research and drafting services provided to Western clients from India amounts to an unauthorized practice of law is now becoming a non-issue. Legal services outsourcing to India, or legal process outsourcing or LPO services has been acknowledged by many State Bar Associations and local bars .

The ABA ethics opinion on legal outsourcing [ABA Comm. on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, Formal Op. 08-451 at 2 (2008)] described the trend towards outsourcing as: "a salutary one for our globalized economy." The ABA Committee concluded that "there is nothing unethical" about the outsourcing of portions of legal services, so long as all services are provided with the "legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary" for representation, and the lawyers involved satisfy their other professional obligations. The Committee also stated that outsourcing "affords lawyers the ability to reduce their costs and often the cost to the client to the extent that the individuals or entities providing outsourced services can do so at lower rates than the lawyers' own staff."

Further, ethics panels of many State Bar Associations and local bars including the Los Angeles County Bar opinion and the San Diego County Bar opinion all have concluded that the off-shoring of legal work to unlicensed attorneys is permissible, so long as the work is supervised by a licensed attorney. These panels state that there is nothing necessarily unethical about having legal work done by lawyers or non-lawyers at off-shore providers, so long as the work is carefully supervised and edited by attorneys admitted to the bar in the U.S. jurisdiction where the work is being delivered. The opinions are useful in that they contribute to a growing consensus as to how offshoring should proceed. The complete text of the Los Angeles County bar opinion on outsourcing can be found here and the San Diego ethics opinion can be found here.

In California, SDD Global provides services such as legal research, analysis, drafting, and problem-solving for California and other U.S., Canada and UK clients, and all at a fraction of the cost of traditional law firms. In the area of litigation our focus is to provide high-end, high-quality, knowledge-based services, such as legal research, and the drafting of complaints, motions, legal briefs and memoranda, discovery documents, appeals, summaries of witness statements, and any other litigation papers, as well as preparation of exhibits for trial.

Since its inception in 2006, SDD Global has been providing outsourced legal services or LPO services to a variety of clients in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Fresno, Sacramento, Long Beach and West Hollywood among other cities. These clients include production companies, film studios, corporations, solo practitioners, law firms, training institutions, individuals and pro se litigants in California.

Los Angeles is home to countless media and production companies. Below are examples of SDD Global's services in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Fresno, Sacramento, Long Beach and West Hollywood.

Channel 4 Television Corporation hired SDD Global to assist in defense against a high-profile media libel case filed in the Superior Court of California, Los Angeles County. The case involved a plaintiff who sought US$800,000 dollars in damages, all allegedly due to the inclusion of her name in a comedy routine. SDD Global's US-law-trained Indian attorneys handled nearly all of the litigation work for the defense, with supervision by U.S. attorneys. Granting Channel 4's motion for summary judgment, the court threw out the lawsuit with a landmark decision that could benefit comedy writers, performers, television broadcasters, and film studios across the United States. The plaintiff appealed this decision, and in a unanimous decision the California Court of Appeal in Los Angeles, affirmed the lower court's decision in favor of Channel 4. A complete text of the appellate court's decision is available here.

Channel 4 was delighted that it chose to fight and defeat the lawsuit, with the high-end yet low-cost offshore legal services provided by SDD Global. Without legal outsourcing to India, battling this lawsuit would not have made economic sense. With SDD Global doing most of the work, it was less expensive for Channel 4 to fight the suit, than to settle it. Channel 4's Controller, Legal and Compliance said in a press release: "Court actions are extremely costly to run, and even where a defendant wins, little if any of its costs are recoverable from the plaintiff. Often, the 'chilling effect' of the threat of significant legal costs, forces defendants to settle with plaintiffs who have no justifiable claim. However, combining the skills and expertise of US attorneys with US law-trained Indian attorneys at SDD Global has proved to be an innovative and cost-effective way for Channel 4 to fight and win litigation."

A Fortune 100 company was sued in California for 40 million dollars. SDD Global prepared a road-map for dismissal of each claim, which was used for oral argument at a status conference, after which the Judge stated that the complaint had no merit. The court persuaded the plaintiff's counsel to withdraw the suit that day.

For an independent worldwide distributor in Los Angeles, SDD Global has analyzed rights agreements and drafted international licensing agreements for 20 films.

San Jose, "the capital of Silicon Valley," is home to innumerable high-technology engineering, computer, and microprocessor companies. SDD global has provided and is capable of providing patent related intellectual property services to these companies.

San Francisco, is a principal banking and finance center, and SDD Global is capable of assisting financial institutions and venture capital firms by providing assistance in mergers and acquisitions matters.

SDD Global provided legal research and prepared a memo for a production company in West Hollywood regarding U.S. copyright law for a film to be based on a surrealist painter.

SDD Global drafted a 45-page opinion letter, for a major film studio in Hollywood, which led to the release of a major motion picture, which might not have been released otherwise. SDD Global also provided a 103-page 50-state survey and legal analysis for various issues such as contract law, defamation, use of hidden camera, misappropriation, invasion of privacy and trespass for a major film in Hollywood. SDD Global provided legal analysis of every scene that was involved in the film. SDD Global drafted all the transactional papers, right from the producers' agreements to the actors' agreements for a Hollywood comedy film in 2009.

Apart from providing offshore legal services to major Hollywood studios and companies, SDD Global has also provided its services to solo practitioners in California. These attorneys were so overburdened with work that they had to turn down new clients. SDD Global's services for solo practitioners in California include drafting a temporary restraining order ("TRO") and replevin applications in California court, legal research and drafting of complaints, drafting Rule 72 objections, drafting discovery papers and responses and drafting demurrers.

SDD Global conducted a search and prepared a report on cases dealing with marine pollution in which plea agreements and/or compliance plans had been entered for a California-based training Institute.

SDD Global conducts title searches and prepares title search reports for various production houses in California.

Last but not least, SDD Global is the first and the only legal outsourcing company to receive screen credit in seven Hollywood movies, including four in 2009, with several more on the way. Two of these films were number one at the box office. SDD Global's services for these movies have included drafting of the entire range of motion picture contracts, legal research and analysis regarding compliance with U.S. and international laws and avoidance of claims, legal research and drafting of litigation papers for defense counsel, and intellectual property searches and registrations. SDD Global stands apart as the only Indian legal outsourcing company providing services for the film and television industries.

SDD Global has proved that the advantages of outsourcing legal services are immense. SDD Global Solutions has made this an economic reality for numerous clients in California.