Overseas Legal Outsourcing and the American Legal Profession: Friend or “Flattener”?

In his bestseller The World Is Flat author Thomas Friedman commented on how the worldwide proliferation of high-speed broadband technology has flattened the global marketplace and enabled U.S. corporations to efficiently and cost-effectively offshore many traditionally domestic white-collar services. Friedman observed that a convergence of technological advances has leveled the global economic playing field and in turn created thousands of well-paying jobs for workers in English-speaking countries such as India and the Philippines. As a consequence of this flattening phenomenon, American white-collar jobs are moving overseas at record numbers to countries where they can be performed at a fraction of the cost. Could this offshore trend, which has already flattened so many other U.S. whitecollar sectors, also flatten the U.S. legal job market