An alternative would be to give the consumer a choice of outsourcing for lower costs or having American-trained attorneys working for them. The disclosure would have to be the good, the bad, and the ugly to be fair (none of this half disclosure we have seen in the financial world).

I am not a fan of outsourcing. That being said, outsourcing is a good thing when it allows more people to afford a bit of “justice.” One of the big problems with outsourcing legal work is that the law is a people business. We interact with our clients; they gain trust in us; and they see that we are indeed working on their case. Clients want to know they are winning or being protected more than they want to know you save them 15% on their car insurance (joke). When their legal work is happening overseas, the client gets none of that, except the discount. Is there value in it, sure. If we took the time to explain completely the nature of legal services to each client I believe most would opt for American representation. If the client knows you understand their case completely and that you take an interest in their welfare, they would likely forego the cost reduction.

What we need to work on is BigLaw costs, or making more lawyers with exceptional ability cost available. I am a proponent of smaller firms with lower overhead and great lawyers. The salary of a good lawyer doesn’t change, the overhead does. If we look at salary vs. cost, we can see that an attorney who bills $250 an hour and can bill 2000 hours they have grossed $500k. If we are big spenders and take out 50% overhead, we still make out at $250k. And $250 an hour is lower than what BigLaw bills out first years. You could bill higher and see bigger numbers (you just have to know the “sweet spot”). I won’t even go into the quality of life you get back.

The problem is not having to send more jobs overseas, it is we need to take bake our legal system from big law firms that charge too much for too little too often. I now there are great attorneys who work at big firms, but that is more the exception than the rule. These big firms look for big clients and the people needing justice the most (those under the $100k a year job) go without. The system has been highjacked and it is ransomed to only those with deep pockets.

Sending legal work overseas will only make big firms more profitable because they will not likely pass this cost savings along to their clients. Our industry will take a hit on its nobility and put even more attorneys out of work, no matter how you spin it.

This whole idea sounds like a Madoff ponzi scheme idea.

I _don’t_ like seeing the billing of contract attorney fees as a disbursement proposed as a means of setting an ethically “reasonable” total fee. Even if a subjective definition of “reasonable” short of unconscionability is appropriate, an argument that contract attorney’s fees _must_ be treated as disbursements and the only additional permissible fee is for supervisory services flows from the suggestion that a disbursement-based approach is ethically proper.

You’re right to say that the significant supervisory burden ABA would impose on buyers of foreign outsourced legal services can only help US contract attorneys. I just wonder if the observation that fees for the supervision of contract attorneys whose own fees are to be treated as disbursements is permissible can be used as a wedge to either drive down US contract lawyer fees or make the use of low-cost offshore services to be supervised by high-priced US attorneys more attractive.