PTI

Toronto, Feb 14: Faced with escalating legal cost, a Canadian Corporate firm has started outsourcing legal work to India.

The new company called Legalwise is offering the same service in Canada, starting on Thursday. It would cut down legal cost by 60 to 70 per cent. The Toronto-based Legalwise has 430 lawyers trained in common law principles, similar to Canada, in Mumbai and Pune ready to work for Canadian clients.

That's the idea behind the official launch of Legalwise, believed to be the first homegrown outsourcing firm that uses lawyers from the Indian sub-continent to carry out assignments under the guidance of Canadian lawyers.

The company is the brainchild of Toronto-based lawyer Gavin Birer, a former Bay Street corporate lawyer and former vice-president of legal and business affairs at Travelex Americas, a non-bank foreign-exchange firm.

"Clients are becoming more aware of the type of legal services they are getting and the costs associated with that," Birer said.

The Canadian Corporate Counsel Association last year found that keeping costs down was the number two priority - after keeping up with the volume of work - among 32 per cent of in-house lawyers it surveyed.

Salaries of associates and articling students - those who do the legal grunt work - are escalating, hitting USD 100,000 and up. "We are not a law firm, we don't provide legal advice," explained Birer.

Legalwise works with lawyers here to identify projects that can be tasked to India. That includes litigation and corporate commercial services, things like legal research, document review and drafting, contract management, lease abstracting, and due diligence.