Legal outsourcing

Legal process outsourcing is being the next big thing in Indian business. It marks India's climb up the chain of outsourcing jobs — from low-end, back-office service functions in call centers to high-value, skilled legal work.In the past three years, the legal outsourcing industry here has grown at about 60 percent annually.According to a report by research firm ValueNotes, the industry will employ about 24,000 people and earn revenue of $640 million by 2010.Indian workers who once helped with legal transcription now offer services that include research, litigation support, document discovery and review, drafting of contracts and patent writing. The industry offers an attractive career path for many of the 300,000 Indians who enroll in law schools every year. India and the United States share a common-law legal system rooted in Britain's, and both conduct proceedings in English.The explosion of opportunity here was triggered by what are known as "e-discovery laws," a set of U.S. regulations established in 2006 to govern the storage and management of electronic data for federal court actions.