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Future Composition Trends: It has been estimated that "the overall addressable offshore opportunity in legal services" will work out to $4.5 billion by 2010. The global legal services market - which includes major developed English speaking countries, the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - is estimated to be around $190 billion in 2005, but less than five per cent of this is "offshoreable".

firms     corporations     publishers

Figure 3: Distribution of Legal Offshoring Industry

Currently, law firms are the largest service buyers from the Indian legal off shoring industry, contributing about 49% of the total $61.6 million revenues (as shown in Figure 3).

Growth projections indicate that by 2010 the legal services off shoring industry in India will employ about 24,000 people-a more than ten-fold increase over current numbers.

Threats: Causes of Concern

The Uncertainty: Quite a lot is being said about the enormous opportunity in legal off shoring for India but the opportunity is more hype than reality. Unlike many areas like IT, banking, finance and insurance services, where as much as 10-12% of the services may be off shored to India, the corresponding number in legal services is only 1%. It is quite likely that some Indian service providers may not survive beyond the next 2-3 years.

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* Contributed by: -
Manas Ranjan Mishra,
Has served as Production Manager at RCIL, Rourkela,
Currently M.B.A I-Year student of Indian Institute of Information Technology & Management, Gwalior.