"The objective is to have only the most valuable people in London or New York, and the others in India, China or Columbus, Ohio,” said Robert Profusek, co-head of the mergers and acquisitions practice at Jones Day in New York, who sends low-end work to the cheapest locations and plans to open a document center in India. “Lawyers are service providers. We are not gods.”

This comes from a gem-packed Bloomberg article today titled: “Jones Day, Kirkland Send Work to India to Reduce Client Bills” co-authored by Cynthia Cotts and Liane Kufchock

Here are some additional outsourcing factoids from the article:

• “Outsourcing will move about 50,000 U.S. legal jobs overseas by 2015”

• “Companies like Dupont, Cisco and Morgan Stanley have legal departments in India”

• “General Electric Co. sends about $3 million a year in routine legal work to its Indian affiliate”

• “Kirkland & Ellis, the seventh-largest U.S. law firm, works with offshore attorneys at the client’s request”

• “Law firms can earn more by using labor they can mark up without disclosure,” said Stephen Gillers, professor of legal ethics at New York University School of Law (referring to offshoring)

• “Law firms contribute 45 percent to offshore revenue, while corporate law departments contribute 36 percent”, ValueNotes said.

PUNCHLINE:  If you are gathering intelligence on outsourcing, this article is a “must read”