A growing number of American law firms are outsourcing legal work to India taking advantage of the country's low cost.

In an article, Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, said, while an hour's work in the US costs anywhere between $200-$300, the same work would cost one-tenth or one-twelfth in India.

Moreover, since both American and Indian legal systems are rooted in the British common law, lawyers in India do not require any special training.

Outsourcing and India

Lawyers in India are also less likely to demand perks like big offices and personal assistants, Alok Aggarwal, chairman of Evalueserve, a New Delhi corporate research outsourcing company, told the daily.

Indian lawyers can easily handle work such as vetting contracts, checking on patent registrations or reviewing documents related to foreign cases.

Using high-speed Internet connections to access US legal and patent data, Indian lawyers can file and defend patents, said the daily.

American lawyers also hire legal outsourcing companies to comb through evidence and documents from past court cases, highlighting what is important and relevant.

"If you have large volumes of documentation or a repetitive activity that can be easily emailed or scanned, it can be outsourced," said Mathew Banks, the chief executive officer at ALMT Synergies, a new legal outsourcing firm.

The Journal said that according to industry analysts and company executives, outsourcing could ultimately change the way legal work is done in Western countries.

They expect it to free up American and British lawyers from time-consuming paperwork, allowing small firms to take on bigger cases -- while cutting the number of legal jobs needed in the US.

Some suggest, said the paper, it could even encourage companies and individuals to become more litigious by lowering the costs of filing lawsuits.

So far, outsourcing has created 12,000 legal jobs worldwide, according to Forrester Research.

The Cambridge (Massachusetts) firm predicts that number could shoot up to 29,000 in 2008, with most of those jobs going to India.

The paper pointed out that more than 200,000 Indians graduate from law schools in the country every year -- five times as many as in the US -- creating an enormous pool of talent to tap from.