Earlier this week, Indian legal process outsourcing company Fronterion LLC launched the Legal Process Outsourcing Resource Center. The Resource Center Purports to be a “[c]omplete source for leading-edge content and online resources relating to the ethics of legal outsourcing.” It’s not.

The most significant area in which the Resource Center comes up short is in its collection of the “ethical issuances” (i.e., “ethics opinions” in American English) of state and local bar associations. The Resource Center lists only these six opinions:

• The Association of the Bar of the City of New York Commission on Professional & Judicial Ethics, Formal Opinion 2006-3 (2006)
• Los Angeles County Bar Association, Opinion 518 (2006)
• North Carolina State Bar, Formal Ethics Opinion 12 (2007)
• San Diego County Bar Association, Legal Ethics Opinion 2007-1 (2007)
• Florida Bar, Opinion 07-2 (2008)
• The Supreme Court of Ohio, Opinion 2009-6 Issued August 14, 2009

I suppose Fronterion’s Indian lawyers did some original research to compile this list, since it does include two more opinions than are listed in the ABA Section of International Law Outsourcing Taskforce’s Overview of US Bar Association Opinions on Offshore Outsourcing.

My book, Contract Lawyering Success, contains a truly comprehensive list of ethics opinions relevant to legal outsourcing. Actually, the upcoming second edition of the book reprints 29 of those opinions, and provides citations to four others, for which I was unable to obtain reprint permission.

In addition to the six opinions Fronterion identified, you can find these opinions in Contract Lawyering Success:

• ABA Formal Opinion 88-356, Temporary Lawyers (Dec. 16, 1988)
• ABA Formal Opinion 00-420, Surcharge to Client for Use of a Contract Lawyer (November 29, 2000)
• Alabama State Bar Office of the General Counsel Ethics Opinion RO-2007-03, Temporary Lawyers
• Alaska Bar Association Ethics Opinion No. 96-1, Ethical Considerations when Billing Clients for Contract Attorney Legal Services
• State Bar of California Standing Committee On Professional Responsibility and Conduct Formal Opinion 1992-126
• Ethics Committee of the Colorado Bar Association, Ethics Opinion 121, Use of Temporary Lawyers and Other Professionals Not Admitted to Practice in Colorado (May 17, 2008)
• Ethics Committee of the Colorado Bar Association, Ethics Opinion 105, Opinion on Temporary Lawyers (May 22, 1999)
• District of Columbia Court of Appeals Committee on the Unauthorized Practice of Law Opinion 16-05
• District of Columbia Bar Opinion 284, Advising and Billing Clients for Temporary Lawyers
• Florida Bar Ethics Committee Advisory Opinion 88-12 (August 1, 1988)
• Florida Bar Ethics Committee Consolidated Opinion 76-33 and 76-38 (March 15, 1977)
• State Bar of Georgia Formal Advisory Opinion No. 05-9
• Illinois State Bar Association Advisory Opinion No. 98-02, Disclosure to Client of Compensation Payable to Independent or Temporary Lawyer for Work on a Specific Case (September, 1997)
• New Hampshire Bar Association Ethics Committee Formal Opinion #1995-96/3, Temporary Lawyers – Temporary Lawyer Placement Agency (November 8, 1995)
• New York State Bar Association Committee on Professional Ethics Opinion 721 (September 27, 1999)
• New York State Bar Association Committee on Professional Ethics Opinion 715 (February 26, 1999)
• Ohio Bd. of Comm’rs on Grievances and Discipline Opinion 2009-6 (August 14, 2009)
• Ohio Bd. of Comm’rs on Grievances and Discipline Opinion 90-23 (December 14, 1990)
• South Carolina Bar Ethics Advisory Opinion 91-09 (1991)
• Supreme Court of Texas Professional Ethics Committee Opinion No. 577 (March 2007)
• Supreme Court of Texas Professional Ethics Committee Opinion 515 (July 1996)
• Committee on Professional Responsibility Association of the Bar of the City of New York, Report on the Outsourcing of Legal Services Overseas (August 2009)
• Committee on Professional and Judicial Ethics, The Association of the Bar of the City of New York Formal Opinion 1989-2 (May 10, 1989)

I was not able to obtain reprint permission for the following opinions:

• D.C. Bar Op. 352: Professional Responsibility Duties for Temporary Contract Lawyers and the Firms that Hire Them (February 2010)
• D.C. Bar Op. 291: Contracts With Temporary Lawyers: Restrictions on Subsequent Employment (June 15, 1999)
• Md. State Bar Assoc. Ethics Comm. Op. 01-31: (1) Engagement of Contract Attorneys; (2) Referral Fees to Lawyer Referring Contract Attorney
• Md. State Bar Assoc. Ethics Comm. Op. 92-19: Billing for Outside Research Service

(Maryland State Bar Association ethics opinions are available online to members of the MSBA only.)

It’s true that not all of the opinions listed above discuss foreign legal outsourcing, and not all even use the term “outsourcing.” Furthermore, some of the opinions listed above have been superseded by more recent ones (also listed above).

Nevertheless, Fronterion positions itself as prepared to “help you navigate the practical, ethical and regulatory implications of legal process outsourcing in a domestic and international context.” (Emphasis supplied). All of the opinions listed above are relevant to legal outsourcing, defined as the performance of substantive legal work by a lawyer who is not affiliated (as a partner, associate or of counsel) with the firm that a client has retained to represent it in a matter.

I thought long and hard before posting this list of opinions, which is the product of many hours of work from 2008 through the present. After all, I’ve basically done all of Fronterion’s work, haven’t I? But I know that, if I’m going to take on the big boys, I have to put the money where my mouth is.

The Resource Center’s list of blogs about outsourcing is also woefully inadequate. Since Fronterion advises about foreign outsourcing, I can understand why three of the four blogs listed (including it’s CEO’s blog) focus on that subject (the fourth, the Legal Informatics Blog, covers a wide range of topics, and appears to have been included in the list primarily to point to a Fordham Law Review article entitled Supply Chains and Porous Boundaries: The Disaggregation of Legal Services). Nevertheless, If the Resource Center were the truly comprehensive resource it purports to be, it would have mentioned this blog as well as the blog published by the National Association of Freelance Legal Professionals. (Since the Legal Outsourcing Journal is fairly new, I’ll give Fronterion a pass on having missed that one.)

I’ve previously pointed out that even some foreign LPOs that claim to have U.S.-based lawyers performing quality control aren’t familiar with all of the ethics opinions upon which the viability of their business model rests. Still, I would expect better from Fronterion, which describes itself as “the pre-eminent legal outsourcing advisor.”