Outsourcing.

First they outsourced the paralegals, and I did not speak out because I was not a paralegal.

Then they outsourced the public defenders and prosecutors, and I did not speak out because I was not a public defender or prosecutor.

Then they outsourced the general magistrates, and I did not speak out because I was not a general magistrate.

Then they outsourced the circuit and appellate judges, and I did not speak out because I was not a circuit or appellate judge.

Then they outsourced the Florida Supreme Court and then there was no one left to speak for me.

Hugo M. Villagra

Ft. Myers

I'd like to commend The Florida Bar for its proposed ethics opinion on outsourcing (Proposed Advisory Opinion 07-2). As a member of The Florida Bar and the CEO of iDiligence, a Miami-based company that connects U.S.-based law firms with offshore attorneys, I've borne witness to innumerable times where the offshoring of certain legal services has not only served as a boon to attorneys, but to their clients as well.

Attorneys have much to gain through legal outsourcing. An attorney inundated with high-volume, paralegal-type work used to have three options: Don't do the work, which of course raises ethical concerns in and of itself; do the work yourself (particularly daunting when we're talking about 250 boxes of documents); or hire contract attorneys/paralegals to do the work for you, thereby absorbing a potentially huge expense (especially if it's a contingency fee case). Now, a fourth option has presented itself: Offshore the work to a team of highly motivated and qualified attorneys at one-third the price of a contract attorney or paralegal.

I work closely with six Indian attorneys. The memos they write and the insight they offer is better than what I've seen many American attorneys provide during my years of practicing. While I was clerking at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, I read work product that was vastly inferior to anything one of iDiligence's attorneys would generate.

To those attorneys who are so adamantly against legal outsourcing, I ask two questions: The first was posited by the Proposed Advisory Opinion: what is the ethical distinction between hiring an overseas provider of legal services and hiring a contract attorney or paralegal domestically? Second, what are you so afraid of? As long as clients continue finding value in the services of their attorneys, clients will not say, "Why am I paying $500 an hour for this?" But as members of the Bar, shouldn't we offer our clients, especially those crunched for cash, the option of outsourcing? Shouldn't we say to them: "This 500,000-page document review can be done in-house for $250 an hour, or offshore for $18 an hour"? And shouldn't an attorney on the receiving end of that same document review have the option of offshoring it?

Once again, kudos to The Florida Bar for taking such a well-reasoned stand on legal outsourcing.

Etan Mark

Miami Beach