Despite the state of the economy, there might actually be a bright spot on the horizon for firms who are willing to creatively staff and plan matters, and use leverage to move work to lower cost attorneys located outside of the U.S.

Julie Triedman over at the AmLawDaily posts about a law firm who is taking on business, litigating cases that otherwise they might have settled due to the prohibitive cost of litigation in the United States, thanks to a legal affiliate in India that bills at a fraction of what a U.S. attorney would bill.

Behind the scenes, the defense team at nine-lawyer SmithDehn and its 26-lawyer Indian affiliate, SDD Global Solutions, had other reasons to celebrate. For perhaps the first time in a U.S. court case, the heavy lifting of deposition preparations and briefing in what became a motion-heavy case was performed in a time zone 12 hours away, inside the firm's Mysore, India-based arm, SDD Global Solutions. There, led by Padmavathi Shanthamurthy, a team of lawyers bill out at between $30-$90 an hour. The role of the U.S. lawyers, firm co-founder Russell Smith and his colleague Michael Cleaver, was confined to editing briefs, taking depositions, and making court appearances.

We know that clients are less willing to pay for a junior associate’s “training” time, so pushing work down the chain to your newest attorneys might not bring in the business that shifting the work geographically might.

As my colleague Bo Yancey pointed out in February, despite the assertions elsewhere in the blogosphere that leverage is on its way out, we continue to believe that leverage will expand in many forms. Some work will be outsourced offshore, or to contract attorneys, and some work will be replaced by technology as legal technology evolves.

As SmithDehn demonstrated, these types of leverage can open up possibilities for new business, and the more effectively and efficiently that these opportunities are managed, the greater the opportunity will be for increasing profits per partner in a business environment where increased profits is sure to be an enviable position.