You can read the full article here.

The firm are thinking about offloading parts of its business process unit it currently operates in Manila to the Czech Republic, Hungary or Southern Poland, amid fears that it is overexposed to the Filipino market. They are to carry out due diligence and make their decision within six months. COO Greg Dolan said the idea was based on factors including political and economic uncertainty and the risk of a natural disaster, as well as the preference for offshore services closer to the hubs the firm serves. He states: “If the Philippines were to go down for two weeks, that would be bad for us” (Source: The Lawyer, November 21, 2011).

Such reports highlight some of the concerns firms and businesses encounter when considering offshoring as an option to save costs. Highlighted in our recent post “Offshoring – why you should stay UK“, these include corruption, data loss and data protection.  Outsourcing is a highly attractive option for making cost savings – and outsourcing to a UK company offers the benefits of those cost savings with less of the concerns experienced when sharing confidential information with a third party. You can feel more confident when:

• You deal with a registered UK company.
• The outsourcing company is in the UK and you can visit any time by appointment.
• You deal with a registered data controller subject to UK law.
• The outsourcing company has adequate indemnity insurance in place.
• The outsourcing company has processes in place to protect your clients’ confidentiality.
• The outsourcing company has advanced IT systems supported by in-house dedicated, qualified UK experts to avoid the risk of data loss.
• You are working under an outsourcing agreement which covers intellectual property and performance standards, transition, disengagement and so on.

Get in touch with our team to discuss how we can make a difference to your business through legal process outsourcing.

Ian notes: “The electronic way of doing business is transforming the law as well as the profession; from jurisdicitional issues to tweeter’s breaching court injunctions. The legal profession cannot ignore the impact technology is having upon it”.

One such impact is the availability of cheap labour through outsourcing work to India and other similar countries. This is a growing trend amongst UK businesses, looking to save costs and undoubtedly adding to the unemployment figures in the process.

Ian notes: “The outsourcing industry quickly caught on to the fact that much legal work is relatively repetitive and, therefore, can be done in low wage environments. The so called legal process outsourcing (LPO) companies have taken this on and there was a spurt of growth”.

But he does not think that India is the future: “Having a billion people as a potential work force does not drive down costs when a massive proportion of them are still totally illiterate. That is not how you sustain a low cost environment for skilled tasks. There are also issues such as corruption, data loss and data protection that the favoured outsourcing nations have to deal with”.

Using a UK company who is a registered data controller is a good compromise for law firms looking to provide highly skilled support to their lawyers whilst at the same time reduce costs. At LegalResearcher.co.uk, vetted UK legally qualified experts (and experts qualified in other jurisdictions, where appropriate) work off-site, instantly reducing your costs by as much as 44% according to studies.  This money is saved because:

• The researchers are only paid for the time you need them – if you have no work for them, you pay nothing.
• You don’t pay them any benefits – holiday, national insurance contributions, bonuses.
• You don’t pay them for sick pay, maternity leave, or paternity leave.
• They don’t take up physical space in the office.
• There’s none of the HR costs associated with regular employees – appraisals, management, administration.

Since you can bill your client for the work at a competitive rate that exceeds the cost of your researcher, you save on all of the above and make a profit on top.  Since we’re based in the UK, you can visit us or we can visit you and you can be confident about the security of your/your client’s data.

A summary of Ian’s speech can be found in the New Law Journal,Issue 7476 “Great expectations? …” (161 NLJ 1064 29 July 2011)

Whilst as a lawyer you may feel some obligation to save your clients money and indeed, consider outsourcing your legal work to India to cut costs and stay competitive, there are ethical considerations. One such consideration is that the ethical rules that bind US attorneys and UK lawyers have no force in India.

Speaking to Time International, Mary C Daly, Dean of St John’s University School of Law in NYC said: “Lawyers are being seduced by the business end of outsourcing and are not being concerned enough with the ethical issues it’s raising. I’m deeply troubled that outsourcing companies do not understand the scope of a lawyer’s duty to confidentiality, nor are they familiar with conflict-of-interest rules,” says Mary C. Daly, dean of St. John’s University School of Law in New York City.

Whilst companies in India promise security and confidentiality, there’s no guarantee.

Another issue is how well the work is carried out. Gregg Kirchhoefer, a partner in the Chicago office of Kirkland & Ellis, said to Time: “We don’t do, haven’t done and don’t plan on doing this. The name of the game for us is quality.” Daly, the law-school dean, says an ethical breach is only a matter of time. “We haven’t seen any documented problems crop up yet, but I’m sure they’re there,” she says. “We’ve certainly seen problems on the domestic side. It would be foolish to assume they’re not on the global side as well.”

So is there an attractive alternative? Yes. Legal Researcher is a UK-based research company offering the services of UK law graduates and lawyers, and of course, if you request a UK lawyer, they will be bound by professional ethics. They can carry out a wide variety of legal tasks at a rate competitive to offshoring, and they can use most popular online law research tools to meet the needs of your law firm. To chat about your needs or to get a free quote without any obligation, get in touch with the team: 01159 667991.

References: Call My Lawyer … in India. Full Text Available By: Barlyn, Suzanne; Robinson, Simon. Time International (Atlantic Edition), 5/12/2008, Vol. 171 Issue 19, p99-100, 2p, 4

Under ‘Finding the Law’, Peter reminds us that citing up-to-date law is extremely important. He advises:

“All the secondary sources will lag behind any changes to the law itself. Some details in textbooks may be out of date even on publication day. It is vital to update references to the law using subscriber-only web sources such as Butterworths Law Online (http://www/butterworths.com/) or Lawtel’s Daily Update (http://www.lawtel.co.uk/). Both services carry summaries of the latest legislation, cases and official publications, and the Lawtel service carries summaries of journal articles as well. The weekly law periodicals: New Law Journal (http://www.new-law-journal.co.uk or http://www.butterworths.com.nlj/index.htm) Gazette (http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/), The Lawyer (http://www.thelawyer.co.uk), Solicitors’ Journal, Journal of the Law Society of Scotland and Scots Law Times provide other ways of keeping up to date. Some titles are available on both paper and the web”.

Much information is available on conducting law research but little information is provided on presenting the legal research itself. On this point, Peter advises that students include:

“…First, an introduction succinctly stating the key legal facts and issues to be discussed (but avoid simply paraphrasing the question). Second, the body of your discussion in which legislation and cases are cited, quoted and discussed, using some of the material you found in the original legislation and case law and from textbooks and journal articles. Third, a conclusion drawing together the arguments and, if appropriate, arriving at a decision or view on the law. Fourth, a complete list of the sources, both primary and secondary, from which you have cited, with sufficient detail of titles, dates, volumes and page numbers, to enable the person marking your work to check the law and opinions you cite and look up the references in the library or on databases”.

For the full article, see 151 NLJ 1528 19 October 2001 ‘Legal research skills—the basics’. Peter Clinch is the author of ‘Using a Law Library: A Student’s Guide to Legal Research Skills’, available from Amazon.co.uk.

• When given a problem to research, trainees should try at that stage to ensure that they understand exactly what is being asked of them in terms of content, the timescale and the desired format of the research and to seek clarification if necessary. It is better to delay starting the task until the trainees are sure what it entails than realise several hours later that they have not fully understood, require more information and may have to start again.

• Before trainees embark on research which is fact dependent, rather than just being on a purely legal issue, they should make a list of what the key factual issues are and obtain, wherever possible, all relevant documentation providing that factual information. PSLs frequently report occasions where trainees have asked them for assistance, but it has become clear that they do not have sufficient facts to proceed. While it is only with experience that one becomes fully aware of what the key factual points are, trainees should be encouraged to think in these terms before they rush to the library or the PSL for help.

• Again, before embarking on the memorandum, trainees should bear in mind that this research is not just some hypothetical task to test their analytical skills, but it is going to be translated into advice for the client. Whilst the memorandum should set out the relevant law, it should wherever possible reach a conclusion and contain practical advice such as timing of next steps, documentation to be drafted and possibly what further information may be necessary to progress the matter. This is an area which trainees, understandably, find hard. It does come easier once they have had exposure to clients and realise that ultimately clients are generally interested more in what needs to be done, and how, as opposed to simply why.

• There is a tendency for trainees to think that the longer the memorandum is the better it is. This is simply wrong. There is a vast amount of information available to them which can be overwhelming. Trainees need to be discerning about what they include: if a case is irrelevant, albeit interesting, it should not be included. If there are ten authorities all supporting the argument, only one should be included.

• It is not possible to twist the facts to suit the law. That may sound a very obvious point, but there are examples of key facts being suitably ignored so that the situation will fit nicely into a given scenario echoed in the case law. Life is not generally as convenient as that and the trainees have to be alive to this. As every individual case is different, a trainee will need to use reason and judgment to come to a conclusion and this leads to perhaps the most common failing.

• Trainees often find it difficult to “pin their colours” to a conclusion preferring to sit on the fence. Unlike law school or university, often there will not be an answer to the problem they have been asked to explore. They will have to consider the case law or the statutory provisions and using their judgment, form a view. As long as trainees set out how and why they have formed that view, the lawyer reading the memorandum can follow the reasoning and possibly challenge it. Whilst the client is paying for us to form a judgment and may be interested to know that there are a range of possible options, ultimately they will only be interested in what the lawyer’s preferred option is.

• From a supervisor’s perspective one of the most important aspects of the research is that all the sources used are clearly identified. It is important that the supervisor is able to judge quickly the value of the research memo by checking that all relevant sources have been utilised. Unfortunately there are examples of trainees mistaking a “Google” search for a thorough piece of legal research.

• Whilst we undoubtedly have a lot to be thankful for in terms of our “Generation Y” trainees’ abilities to use electronic resources instinctively, valuable skills are being lost including referencing, using and cross-referring hard copy source materials and, in particular, the ability to use an index quickly and effectively.

Law students and researchers alike will benefit from following these invaluable law research tips ‘from the inside’.

For the full article, see Tuckwell, C, Law firm legal research – what trainees need to know, L.I.M. 2010, 10(2), 108-110. For more information on opportunities at Herbert Smith, see http://www.herbertsmith.com/Careers/

1. Providing courses and lectures in legal research;

2. Providing a consultation service to students to assist them with specific research tasks”.

Wieland describes some of the courses on offer at the University:

“Research and Writing in Real Time. This is a one-day practical workshop providing students an opportunity to research a legal matter and write a short memorandum of advice. I conduct this with my colleague Dr. Anthony McCosker, who is the Law School’s Language and Learning Adviser. He has broad experience in teaching academic skills to students across the University of Melbourne and within the Law School. This workshop aims to help further develop and test research and writing skills in preparation for work in a law firm. Through instruction, examples and real time exercises, Researching and Writing in Real Time demonstrates how to find the right information fast, how to record and present a research trail and how to communicate the findings clearly in written form to colleagues or clients.

How to be a Thinker not just a Finder. This half-day course focuses on teaching students to have research strategies and techniques, rather than just randomly searching. Many of our students have great finding skills, but neglect to ask who published the material, and when it was last updated. This course focuses on teaching students how to be thoughtful researchers.

Get Ready for Work Programme. This is an optional one-day course that is offered to all Melbourne University law students. It is a practical legal research training programme that targets those about to enter into seasonal clerkships (law firm based work in university breaks), internships, and graduate traineeships. Approximately 133 students from the LLB and JD have been through the programme to date.

The course is broken down into four two-hour sessions:

Session 1 – Understanding legal resources. Understanding authority, currency and developing methodologies.

Session 2 – Understanding the legislative process and researching within it.

Session 3 – How to refine the task, the “reference interview”, where we watch a short video that I developed with Bliss Consulting, where a young law graduate forgets to ask the questions necessary to be able to conduct her research in a timely and effective manner.

Session 4 – How to create a research trail”.

For the full article, see: Wieland, N, Life-long learning – how legal research is taught at Melbourne University, L.I.M. 2010, 10(2), 101-103. To find out more about the law school at Melbourne University, visit: http://www.law.unimelb.edu.au/

“On joining the course, you are expected already to be able to:

Generally

• Locate, collate, analyse and apply information to answer specific legal problems, using both traditional paper-based sources and electronic bibliographic primary and secondary sources
• Check the development and current validity of the law in a particular area

Specifically

• Find and use the primary sources of the law (cases, statutes and statutory instruments) using both paper-based and electronic sources. In particular, you should be able to:
• Locate a law report from either the reference or the party information
• Use a case citator and understand its significance
• Find statutes and statutory instruments and know how to use relevant updating services
• Use Halsbury’s Laws of England and Current Law
• Access EU material, in particular directives, regulations and EU case reporting series
• Access relevant articles in leading journals
• Locate and use secondary sources (such as leading practitioner texts) where appropriate as a precursor to detailed reference to primary sources
• Collate, analyse and apply relevant material in a particular field of law”.

Source: http://www.sra.org.uk/documents/students/student-enrolment/beforeyoustart.pdf (page 29)

The LPC builds on these research skills, allowing students to develop and apply them through practical exercises.  How is this achieved by institutions?  Tony Simmonds examines the way legal research skills are covered comprehensively at the College of Law.  Looking first at GDL students:

“On enrolment, library staff deliver two separate timetabled workshops to small groups of GDL students. These induction sessions, each lasting 40 minutes, involve students in the practicalities of choosing and then exploiting different sources. We take a “tell-show-do” approach, mixing explanation and demonstration of techniques with student exercises. The first workshop, in week 1, focuses on electronic solutions. The second, covering printed sources, ties in with a set of coursework tasks that GDL students are required to tackle using books only (they must record page references with their answers). With the aim of making these tasks more rewarding for students, library staff recently re-devised them so that they all attach to a single, topical issue (Assisted suicide)”.

Looking now at practical legal research within the cirriculum:

“Within the formal LPC curriculum, Practical Legal Research (PLR) is one of a cluster of skills that are taught early on under an umbrella of Introduction to Professional Practice. Teaching staff deliver two workshops that focus especially on PLR, in the context of analysing and then researching real-world legal problems and then reporting findings in an appropriate format and drafting advice to clients. The content of problems that students encounter depends on which LPC pathway they are following. For example “Firm-Specific” students, those sponsored by Clifford Chance, Linklaters or Allen & Overy, firms which send their future trainees exclusively to the College, will generally work on problems set in a corporate context”.

“In addition to preparing and then consolidating their learning in workshops, students must also complete online “test and feedback” exercises, including a set of multiple choice questions that test their knowledge of using printed sources. The PLR assessment which follows in October requires students to produce two research reports, one dealing with a specific issue and the other dealing with two or more intertwined issues.

Each LPC course thereafter incorporates research activities, so that the skills learned on the formal PLR course are reinforced and strengthened throughout the programme.

As well as course materials for Legal Method and PLR, students are provided with a variety of other resources within the curriculum to support learning about research. A manual accompanying each course includes extensive coverage of legal research techniques and sources and students are guided in their reading as the course unfolds. Additionally, all students receive a bound pack of Research Guides, in which library staff describe how to exploit individual databases and printed encyclopaedias, and also outline aspects of research by theme (for example, Effective Electronic Research or Finding Older Cases ).

In recent years the College has invested heavily in e-learning. Its flagship product is a wide-ranging suite of interactive training tutorials, or “i-Tutorials”. These comprise online video recordings of tutors, supported with slides and interactive exercises. Each lasts around 45 minutes, is accessible over the internet and can be stopped, started and replayed. Students have responded very positively to this flexible and re-usable mode of learning. An i-Tutorial in support of PLR was among the first to be introduced at the College, and has recently been re-scripted and re-filmed for a third edition. A senior member of the Knowledge team led design throughout”.

Simmons examines legal research exercises outside of the cirriculum:

“Besides the compulsory research activities that students encounter as part of the curriculum, College libraries offer an assortment of voluntary learning opportunities. Each stocks a variety of textbooks about legal research. Qualified information officers are available to help with ad hoc research queries. Student representatives employed by Westlaw and LexisNexis host regular drop-in clinics where students can obtain informal peer-to-peer training.

Various sign-up workshops are also offered on a rolling basis from September each year, as demand dictates. We arrange for external trainers from the various publishers to come on site to enable students to learn about specific databases in detail. Also, library staff deliver three separate one-hour workshops by theme, which enable students to consolidate their skills and knowledge by watching demonstrations then carrying out exercises with expert support:

• How to research case law and legislation using electronic sources
• How to research using paper sources
• How to research journals and newspapers

Finally, library staff launched a new suite of eight multimedia tools for the 2009/10 academic year, called “i-Guides”:

• Before you Start (covering general techniques and tips)
• Starting Paper Research
• Starting Online Research
• Finding and Updating Cases – Paper
• Finding and Updating Cases – Online
• Finding and Updating Legislation – Paper
• Finding and Updating Legislation – Online
• Researching EU Law

Each of these short (10 minute) presentations comprises a series of slides, overlaid by a podcast that explains a particular area of research. We used Adobe Captivate to capture then embed videos of searches within the i-Guides that cover online sources. Students can check their learning by answering a few brief questions at the end of each i-Guide. In addition, an overall “test and feedback” quiz is offered to gauge learning across all eight presentations”.

To read the full article, see: Simmonds, T, Building proficiency: approaches to teaching legal research at the College of Law, L.I.M. 2010, 10(2), 90-94. To find out more about the College of Law, visit: http://www.college-of-law.co.uk/home/

How are law research skills taught to Barristers? Haines explains the methods used at BPP College, one of several institutions offering the BVC/BPTC.

“The legal research training currently offered to BVC students at BPP College takes a range of different formats.

The first experience which BVC students receive of formally taught legal research comes in small group sessions (usually numbering around twelve students per group), in which classes of students are brought to the library for a hands-on research session involving hardcopy resources. Legal research materials such as Halsbury’s Laws of England, Halsbury’s Statutes/Statutory Instruments and the Current Law Citators/Yearbooks are shelved in a self-contained area within the library which can be segregated off for classes and students are given practical questions to research and answer, with supervision and assistance on hand, as part of the exercise.

Shortly after these hard-copy sessions, training in the use of online resources follows. Larger group sessions are timetabled in a lecture theatre, when a demonstrator will lecture and perform live searches of online legal research resources which are displayed on screens. Visiting trainers from LexisNexis and/or Sweet & Maxwell will usually host these sessions and on many occasions in the past the trainers have actually themselves been trained barristers. Both the hard-copy and online training sessions are timetabled classes; meaning that the students are expected to attend, a register may be taken and this will be counted towards the minimum attendance requirements which form one of the conditions of passing the BVC.

In contrast to the obvious advantages of having the resource publishers themselves provide the training, there are also some potential negatives to this; most obviously that the partisan demonstrators will only be promoting the virtues of their own products and occasionally students have commented that these sessions can resemble a marketing exercise as much as a training session. A further problem is that there is very little interaction involved in the online demonstrations so, unlike the hard-copy classes, students do not come away with any direct experience of using the resources. To counter this, further legal research sessions are then offered for students who feel that they would benefit from additional training. These sessions are run directly by the library in dedicated IT rooms (one computer for each student), and conducted by the Library Manager or Senior Information Assistant.

Library legal research training sessions are scheduled at staggered times, to make it easier for those students studying on the part-time course to attend in the evening or at the weekend if other commitments get in the way. Attendance is voluntary, and take-up tends to be proportionally higher amongst part-time BVC students; some of whom may have less immediate access to assistance on a day-to-day basis, or may need to build up sufficient confidence with the online sources before going away and completing coursework exercises remotely using solely online sources.

Two formats of library session are offered, each lasting for an hour. The standard session splits into three sections and covers online searching for case law, legislation and legal commentary materials. As well as basic document retrieval from the database resources, sessions also cover search methodology and techniques. On request, a longer ninety minute version of this session is arranged for groups, which begins with an exercise using hard-copy sources in the library.

The second type of training session offered is focused on preparing students for undertaking the legal research exercise itself. This session focuses heavily on the use of practitioner texts and Halsbury’s Laws of England; searching and browsing both genres in hard copy and online formats as the starting point to answering legal research questions. Other legal research materials, such as textbooks and journals online, are also covered and in this session minimal coverage is given to case law and legislation. By this stage it is assumed that most students should be confident with basic online searching.

The legal research exercise itself requires each student to answer a detailed legal scenario question which can often be multi-faceted and will involve the use of cases, legislation and legal commentary materials (usually practitioner texts). Students are expected to use a variety of sources to answer these questions and must present full details of their research trail when submitting their answer.

At the conclusion of the course, a final training session is offered entitled “Preparing for practice”. Comments from the Inns of Court libraries have suggested that some pupils ask relatively basic legal research questions at the beginning of their pupillage, and put this down to it having been so long since their legal research training (which often takes place early in the BVC). These training sessions are intended to sharpen up the legal research skills of BVC students before they enter pupillage, or other fields within the legal profession. They also aim to ensure that students are familiar with using a range of different resources, rather than relying on one single source, which they may discover, to their horror, that a future employer does not subscribe to”.

Since September 2010, BVC (now BPTC) courses no longer have the formal assessment on legal research skills (or negotiation). The legal research skills required are now assumed to be generally integrated into the skills subjects and soaked up within the completion of other modules.

For the full article, see: Haines, M, Legal research training: moving the Bar, L.I.M. 2010, 10(2), 86-89

• When to start research in print and when to start electronically.
• Boolean searching: use of “and,” “or,” exclamation points, asterisks, and parentheses.
• Ability to search local information: city, county, and zoning codes.
• Knowledge of state and local bar sites for primary resources, amendments to court rules, and professional development.
• Legislative history searching: statutes, session laws, and committee reports.
• Understanding of administrative law and regulation.
• Secondary resources: corporate, real estate, and other areas of law besides litigation.
• Use of Pacer: district, circuit, and bankruptcy docket searching.
• Cost-effective research: difference between transactional and per-minute searching.
• Knowing where current information and updates are located in print materials, pocket parts and supplements.
• Knowledge of comprehensive free Web sites to find legal information: [In the US} Thomas.gov, GPOAcess.gov, USCourts.gov, and Zimmerman’s Guide.

To read the full article, see: Legal Reference Services Quarterly; 2009, Vol. 28 Issue 1/2, p133-149, 17p