Even with contract attorneys providing law firms the opportunity to cut their bills/its costs with respect to e-discovery, the expenditures can still be prohibitive, particularly in high-cost regions like D.C. and New York where the cost to house document reviewers on a contract basis is higher than elsewhere in the U.S.   As we have reported in the past, besides the state-of-the-art technology driving costs down, the drive to cut costs has led corporations and law firms to seek other ways to cover their e-discovery work — without sending it overseas (click here and click here). 

These outsourcing discussions highlight a law firm or client’s desire to simply seek lower cost alternatives, and that has led to a growing development of “farmshoring” or “onshoring” by staffing projects in preferred locales that the industry calls the lower cost “on shore” centers of, for example,  Atlanta, Charlotte, Columbus, Houston, Indiana and Tennessee, as well as working with law firms in smaller metropolitan areas where billable rates are lower but quality is just as high, or going with lower cost niche firms throughout the country. 

As Lumen Legal says in its recent white paper: “As such, the industry is re-thinking its cost-saving strategy even further, expanding it to ask not only who is performing document review, but where.  Companies are starting to accept that the location of the contract lawyers is irrelevant.”

And so we’ve seen this greater movement to “outsourcing” document reviews but to these “on shore” centers — to U.S.-licensed lawyers in less-populated, less expensive areas of the country.  It’s the alternative to offshoring that many clients and attorneys find unattractive.  Ohio, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, for instance, have a wealth of law schools, a supply of legal skills and legal services capacity, and housing document reviews is not as expensive as other regions.

And that’s why we’ve recently seen a 50+ lawyer document review in San Antonio, a 45+ attorney document review in Tennessee and a soon-to-launch 50-75 attorney document review in Ohio.

And that’s why our staffing agency list keeps growing .  You can find a complete list of staffing agencies (with more to come) under “Staffing Agencies” on our home page.

Yes, there is work — and it’s not all foreign language and definitely not like the work flow in days of yore — but it definitely is not all in India.   We are certainly NOT discounting the power of offshore centers but there is also an undercurrent in the U.S., away from the metro centers.

So we are expanding the job lists to serve new Posse List members and new agencies.  You can find a complete listings of all our job lists by clicking here.   And there will be more lists to come as we add several cities.