Susan Cartier Leibel at  Build a Solo Practice brings us this  guest post from “the highly animated Rahul Jindal from Delhi, India.”  No, Susan isn’t endorsing this concept, but rather providing a public service.

Rahul is the brains behind Legal Process Outsourcing, and it is actually part of the ABA Blawg 100 (apparently taking the place of  New York Personal Injury Law Blog by the Turk, which inexplicably ended up as the pathetic Blawg 101).

So while you’re thinking to yourself, how can I maintain, or (dare I dream) expand my practice, Rahul is here to tell you how you can ship your work over to “the destination for knowledge driven industries and call-centers.”  That would be India. 

Now if you think that our domestic marketing mavens are a bit pushy, Rahul is utterly without shame. 

And you can be a part of this success. Go offshore! No, I didn’t mean that you move to India yourself but rather that you think about having some people work for you and build your practice, helping you become increasingly competitive and profitable at the same time. If using offshore resources also enables you to scale up your own operations, why not?

It sounds like a party, doesn’t it?  And it probably is, except the party is over there and we aren’t invited.  We are encouraged, however, to send gifts.

But it’s cheaper at least, right?  Well, probably so, but don’t get too crazy about it.

You are in it for long and for value. As with any other relation, getting it to work to your benefit will take time and effort, so don’t nickel and dime about the rate too much. As the saying goes, if you pay only peanuts, you get only monkeys!

Peanuts and monkey?  Sounds like mixed metaphor to me, but then it’s coming from India and they may know something about monkeys that I don’t.  It’s a cultural thing.

Rahul has a series of suggestions for making your India outsourcing a pleasant and successful thing (at least for them).  My personal favorites has to do with his suggestion that you personally go to India to meet the people into whose hands your clients’ lives are placed. 

Agreed, physically seeing your vendor or his resources may not be often possible. But do it when it is possible, combine an Asian vacation with a day’s visit to your vendor’s premises. Speak to your team often. Form a relation; it matters a lot to Indian people if you ask about their family, interests and aspirations.

And there is nothing more important to my representation of clients than my outsourced “staff” know that I care deeply about them.

Rahul offers many things for the solo lawyer by outsourcing to that home of call centers, India.  But he’s not going to get my business until he offers one service notably missing:  Once I can outsource the guy doing time in prison, you’ve got something for me Rahul.  Until then, I’m just going to do my own legal work and give my clients what they believe they’re getting when they retain me to represent them.