Legal Outsourcing - Boon or Bane for Lawyers?

Outsourcing - Such a hated word. Especially when it happens to American jobs. Accept it. Just like you did with computers and the internet. Its now a global economy. You can either resist the change and stick to your abacus or say, 'Heck! I'll see how best can I use it for my advantage.' The same paradigm applies to the legal field. Legal Outsourcing (the onshore type) has been around for over a couple of decades if not more. Now offshoring it is just a step up (or down depending on your perspective). So legal work is being compartmentalized, piecemealed and made efficient! Is that such a bad thing? The legal field much like the medical one, has been protected for the longest time. Protected or impenetrable markets tend to become oligopolies, and we all know what happens with that! (case and point the oil prices). I have read at least one article every month on grievances against the billable hour. But is anything tangible being done about it? There have been innovations where terms like value billing have been thrown in, yet one begs the question if it was that effective why has it not been adopted throughout the legal world or atleast by a substantial portion of it? Legal Outsourcing is here to stay. It will make this market leaner and more efficient. It DOES offer greater efficiency with the time difference working to our advantage and the reduced labor costs (albeit this is not going to last forever). The labor pool might have a learning curve right now but will get better - soon. More than anything else it offers an alternative in many cases where there was none. The legal community should take a closer look at what legal outsourcing might be all about and see if it can benefit them and possibly make their lives easier.