50,000 U.S. legal jobs to be outsourced by 2015?

Big corporate law firms are increasingly outsourcing legal work. It's not surprising that a lot of document review and boilerplate work would go to a place like India, where costs are low (thanks in part to government social welfare spending, ahem), the lawyers learn the same basics of common law, and English is the language of government and commerce.

I think they won't be outsourcing small-firm stuff anytime soon, what with economies of scale. Criminal law probably needs to stay stateside as well. Government lawyers probably are safe, although who knows--if the Bush administration can privatize a war, all bets are off.

Lest I forget how truly fortunate I am, I read war stories from the big city legal sweatshops on Temporary Attorney. It's a shame that my brothers and sisters in the legal profession have to work in such awful environments--and now this is the same work that's being outsourced.