HireTrade BlogHireTrade BlogThe blog for the HireTrade Legal Market, the marketplace for legal outsourcing and contract attorney hiring Articles
LPO - India or U.S. Staffing Agencies
2008-01-24 17:52:00 An interesting read on legal process outsourcing, though we strongly disagree with Mr. Perla’s view that the only lawyers who work for staffing agencies “are the ones who couldn’t make it as real lawyers.” The problem lies not in the quality of the lawyers who work for staffing agencies (there are many former associates, partners, GCs, and sole practioners who have graduated from top-tier law schools and worked at top-tier firms and businesses who either do this temporarily or on the side as they work on other ventures) but in the lack of feedback regarding work quality that is transmitted to the marketplace and, in turn, the lack of incentives for contract attorneys to perform at a high level. There are highly-qualified lawyers both in the U.S. and in India and, as pointed out in the article, the administrative costs are often lower when using resident U.S. licensed attorneys. That is not to say that outsourcing certain legal work overseas does not h... More About: Staffing , Agencies
The Billable Hour, With Accountability
2008-01-24 16:04:00 We came across an interesting article on the billable hour. While critics have been saying for years that the billable hour is dead, the billable hour does retain usefulness as a means of calculating output in a field such as the legal field where output is so variable and otherwise hard to quantify. Thus, we think the death of the billable hour is greatly exaggerated. However, we certainly agree with Mark Chandler and other critics regarding misalignment of interests between clients and service providers.  “Put most bluntly, the most fundamental misalignment of interests is between clients who are driven to manage expenses, and law firms which are compensated by the hour,” said Cisco’s general counsel, Mark Chandler. We think transformative changes to the legal industry are already occuring and that competition and change will benefit clients and the legal marketplace. In fact, our solution is our patent-pending Hour lyValue Ratings System, whereby professi... More About: Accountability
India?s Fertile Outsourcing Market
2008-01-04 00:20:00 While we will stick to business, legal, and IT services at HireTrade, it seems that no market is immune to the India n outsourcing boom. As reported by the Associated Press, outsourcing pregnancies is a growing business in India: Experts say it could take off for the same reasons outsourcing in other industries has been successful: a wide ... More About: Outsourcing , Market
More Attempts at Lawyer Ratings?
2007-12-02 18:31:00 As reported by legalweek.com, a number of clients are attempting to devise their own internal ratings of outside counsel. As the article suggests, many clients have abandoned such attempts in the past, finding them unwieldy and not very useful. The task of ranking firms does get complex with different types of work ? you have to ... More About: Hire , Lawyer , Trade , Ratings , Temp
Inefficiencies in the Legal Staffing Industry
2007-11-26 00:32:00 by Neil Sandhu As I pointed out in my last post, the best legal staffing agencies certainly do make the market for contract legal work more efficient. However, inefficiencies still abound in the contract legal staffing marketplace. At Hire Trade , we believe that one of the major factors contributing to an inefficient market is the lack of information ... More About: Industry , Legal , Staffing
The Value of Legal Staffing Agencies
2007-11-20 23:30:00 by Neil Sandhu Many contract attorneys (which at one time, included members of our staff) often balk at the seemingly large cuts that staffing agencies take “out of their paychecks”. Upon seeing themselves and their contract attorney colleagues working hard for law firms and their end clients, contract attorneys often feel like the agency is unfairly profiting off their work. ... More About: Hire , Legal , Trade , Staffing , Agencies
HireTrade Launches Revolutionary New Legal Staffing Marketplace
2007-11-19 13:00:00 Arlington, Virginia?November 19, 2007 Hire Trade today launched a one-of-a-kind online legal staffing marketplace. With its limited-release beta testing complete, HireTrade is now a fully-functional nationwide legal staffing marketplace open to all hiring parties and legal professionals. Powered by the patent-pending HourlyValue Ratings System, HireTrade allows legal staffing agencies, headhunters, law firms, businesses, and clients to find, compare, ... More About: Legal , Staffing , Marketplace
Infosys to Aggressively Enter LPO Space
2007-11-14 18:40:00 As reported in TheLawyer.com, Indian IT/consulting/outsourcing heavyweight Infosys plans to aggressively enter the legal process outsourcing (LPO) space. While not unexpected, the magnitude of the initiative is impressive, although we wouldn’t be surprised if even these estimates are exceeded: Infosys plans on developing the LPO to encompass a range of practices with more than 1,000 staff over the next ... More About: Space , Enter
Temp Attorney Life
2007-11-08 16:20:00 A great article about life as a contract attorney appeared in the Washington City Paper this week. More About: Life , Attorney , Temp
General Counsel Musical Chairs
2007-11-06 15:59:00 Interesting story about some re-shuffling of GC’s at major technology companies. Not a bad gig if you can get it… http://www.law.com/jsp/ihc/PubArticleIHC. jsp?id=1194257038059 More About: Musical , General , Chairs
Avvo Ratings
2007-10-31 02:17:00 Interesting to see some of Mark Britton’s Avvo Client Ratings and Peer Endorsements: http://www.avvo.com/attorneys/98104-wa-ma rk-britton-28995.html If the CEO’s own profile contains such data, what does that say about every other lawyer’s ratings? Just how useful is such information in determining whether or not to hire such lawyer?
Avvo Ratings
2007-10-27 02:32:00 Interesting to see some of the supposed Client Ratings and Peer Endorsements for Mark Britton, Avvo’s CEO: http://www.avvo.com/attorneys/98104-wa-ma rk-britton-28995.html Unfortunately, with such a system you get people posting information unrelated to actual lawyer performance. If the CEO’s own profile includes such data, what about every other lawyer in the database?
The Future of HireTrade and the Power of the HourlyValue Ratings System
2007-10-24 21:31:00 by Neil Sandhu We have been fielding numerous questions about our new service. In response, here is a brief summary of what we feel will ultimately distinguish HireTrade from our competitors in the online freelance space and also truly create a “Professional Market” where a large volume of mainstream professional services is sourced through our online system. Power ed by the proprietary patent-pending HourlyValue Ratings System , HireTrade is a new Web 2.0 marketplace for professional services that allows clients to more effectively and efficiently compare and choose professionals. The HourlyValue Ratings system provides unique incentives for professionals to perform their best and harnesses the collective wisdom of past clients in order to create a more efficient market for professional services. At the moment, we are focused on the market for contract attorneys and other temporary legal professionals, although we will expand to other vertical markets in the near ... More About: Future , The Future
HireTrade Announces Additional Features
2007-10-22 05:46:00 HireTrade is pleased to announce the ability for law firms and businesses to create anonymous or entirely private project postings using our new service. Clients now have three options when creating a project using HireTrade. Projects can either be designated: 1) public; 2) public but anonymous (most project information is contained in the project posting, although information regarding the ... More About: Hire , Features , Feat , Anno
Martindale-Hubbell now charging for lawyer ratings
2007-10-16 04:15:00 by Neil Sandhu As Kevin O’Keefe reports, one of the granddaddies of the lawyer ratings business has started to charge for the publication of its ratings. As background information on the ratings, Martindale-Hubbell states on its website: A cooperative effort with the legal profession Peer Review Ratings are established by lawyers. The legal community respects the accuracy of Ratings because it ... More About: Hire , Lawyer , Trade , Charging
Law Firm Staff Layoffs
2007-10-15 21:08:00 In keeping with the theme of our last couple blog posts, David Lat at Abovethelaw.com reports on staff layoffs at Heller Ehrman. As David reports: But staff layoffs, even if they don’t foreshadow associate layoffs, are still worth watching. They serve as a “canary in the mine” of sorts, with respect to a law firm’s financial health. David ... More About: Staff
Reducing Billables?
2007-10-09 17:22:00 by Neil Sandhu In contrast to the likely trend I highlighted in my previous post, interestingly at least one firm is cutting its billable hours requirement for first-year associates, as outlined in an article in the National Law Journal. The articles goes on to mention: The new policy at Strasburger & Price comes at a time of high dissatisfaction ...
Recent Associate Salary Raises, Law Firm Economics, etc.
2007-10-06 00:22:00 by Neil Sandhu The recent associate salary raises adopted by many of the larger law firms in the U.S. is merely a repeat of a cyclical pattern that occurs about once a decade. The last major bump up in associate salaries occurred in 1999/2000 spurred on by the “irrational exuberance” of the time as well as law firms having ... More About: Economics , Recent , Salary , Associate
Using HireTrade, continued?
2007-10-05 23:26:00 HireTrade can be used by law firms, businesses, and individuals in need of expert legal assistance or contract legal help. The system is flexible and can be used to hire contract attorneys, paralegals, and other legal professionals for most of your legal needs. At this point, we do not offer the administrative support that agencies offer on ... More About: Hire , Conti
User-generated Contract Lawyer Ratings
2007-10-04 06:02:00 by Neil Sandhu I came across an interesting entry on user-generated content on the Avvo blog made by Paul Bloom, VP of Products and Marketing at Avvo. Fundamentally, the Economist study as well as the other studies cited by Mr. Bloom all lend powerful support to our HourlyValue Ratings System. After all, the studies show just how often users actually ... More About: Hire , Lawyer , Trade , Contract , User
Using HireTrade to Hire Contract Attorneys and other Legal Professionals
2007-10-03 20:58:00 HireTrade can be used for virtually all of your contract attorney and paralegal hiring needs. Increasingly, a great deal of legal work can be done remotely by contract attorneys located anywhere such as in their own offices or home offices. In many other instances, law firms hire contract attorneys and other legal professionals through staffing ... More About: Hire , Legal , Contract , Professionals
Lawyer Ratings Systems
2007-10-01 20:48:00 by Neil Sandhu First, let me start by saying we support Avvo 100% in the courts and believe the free market should be allowed to operate so that consumers of legal services have access to as much information as possible and we commend Avvo for attempting to come up with a ratings system that is useful to consumers. However, we ... More About: Hire , Lawyer , Trade , Systems , Ratings
The Shifting Legal Landscape Part II
2007-09-30 17:40:00 by Neil Sandhu While nothing I wrote in my previous post is breaking news, given the economic realites they face, law firms and clients can certainly benefit from outsourcing some legal work to contract attorneys and other legal professionals. Law firms are able to keep a smaller staff of highly-skilled in-house professionals while also turning to contract professionals for ... More About: Hire , Landscape , Legal , Trade , Part
The Shifting Legal Landscape Part II
2007-09-30 17:40:00 by Neil Sandhu While nothing I wrote in my previous post is breaking news, given the economic realites they face, law firms and clients can certainly benefit from outsourcing some legal work to contract attorneys and other legal professionals. Law firms are able to keep a smaller staff of highly-skilled in-house professionals while also turning to contract professionals for ... More About: Hire , Landscape , Legal , Trade , Part
The Shifting Legal Landscape
2007-09-30 17:35:00 by Neil Sandhu A generation ago (and for countless generations before that), it was common for a lawyer to graduate from law school (with little or no debt) and spend the next 40 years in a law firm earning a nice living. Both the attorney and the law firm had a gentlemen’s agreement at the time of ... More About: Landscape , Legal
The Shifting Legal Landscape
2007-09-30 17:35:00 by Neil Sandhu A generation ago (and for countless generations before that), it was common for a lawyer to graduate from law school (with little or no debt) and spend the next 40 years in a law firm earning a nice living. Both the attorney and the law firm had a gentlemen’s agreement at the time of ... More About: Landscape , Legal , Scape
Welcome to the HireTrade Blog
2007-09-27 05:04:00 Welcome to our newly-launched blog! We will blog on a variety of topics here (mostly legal-related and many related to Hire Trade ) although we sometimes can?t help veering off topic and won’t use this blog only for shameless self-promotion as to why HireTrade is a better way to hire contract attorneys and other legal professionals. We also welcome guest blogs, ... More About: Blog
Welcome to the HireTrade Blog
2007-09-27 05:04:00 Welcome to our newly-launched blog! We will blog on a variety of topics here (mostly legal-related and many related to Hire Trade ) although we sometimes can?t help veering off topic and won’t use this blog only for shameless self-promotion as to why HireTrade is a better way to hire contract attorneys and other legal professionals. We also welcome guest blogs, ... More About: Blog , Etrade |
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