Last week I was extremely privileged to have been invited to speak at the Berkeley School of Law at a conference hosted by the Institute for Global Challenges and the Law. The conference, entitled International Outsourcing of the Legal Profession, was the fifth topic specific (i.e. solely devoted to the subject of offshore legal outsourcing) conference that I’ve attended over the last year. Trust me when I assure you that I have by no means attended every such event on the subject. Off the top of my head I can recollect at least four others which for a variety of reasons I declined to attend. There are probably others that have no doubt slipped my mind or that I was never aware of in the first place. However, with a myriad of legal outsourcing panel sessions now firmly tucked under my belt, I feel compelled to share with my readers some of the conclusions that I have reached on their often generic format and content. Before embarking on my rant I genuinely want to stress that the Berkeley conference was an extremely well run, professional and interesting event. My comments that follow are by no means directed towards this specific conference. In fact I’d go as far to say that at Berkeley the content was significantly more along the lines of what I determine as being unquestionably useful for the attending delegates. Nevertheless, if the objective is to afford practical, pragmatic information, aimed at facilitating attendees’ decision-making processes, then I contend that the panel sessions’ content must now begin to move beyond the rhetoric into the operating details.

First, make no mistake about it, at all of these conferences the number of vendors will generally outweigh the number of real potential "clients". Until the vendor market consolidates and/or the content moves beyond the basics of legal outsourcing I don’t see this situation changing. Second, without clear guidance from the conference organizers you run the risk on being on the receiving end of a blatant sales pitch. If I were a client attending such an event, I would find a sales pitch to be both amateur and a complete waste of my time. My reaction would be one of utter disdain towards the organization so obviously propounding the utilization of their own services coupled with a mild irritation at the conference organizers for allowing such a party to slip through the net. Third, and in my opinion the most frustrating, without pre-conference liaising and planning between not only the speakers on each panel but between the different panels you will inevitably suffer from duplicated material from one panel to the next.

I have listed below a small selection of panel titles (some of my own are included so no one can accuse me of not being self-critical!) that to all intents and purposes covered a lot of the same ground time after time.

Choose the Right Model for Outsourcing your Legal Services Recognizing and Preparing for Other Important Impediments to LPO The Fundamentals of Legal Process Outsourcing Obstacles to Outsourcing Impact of Outsourcing on the Legal Profession The Ethical and Liability Risks in Outsourcing Legal Services Dispelling the myths of legal outsourcing Examining the Security & Privacy Risks in Legal Outsourcing What to Look for in Choosing an LPO Shaping the Future of Legal Outsourcing: What Every Law Firm Needs to Know

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