Susskind & Cooper on Legal Services Outsourcing at Rio Tinto

Legal Week has published a video of a very interesting discussion between Dr. Richard Susskind and Leah Cooper, Rio Tinto’s Managing Attorney, of Rio Tinto‘s June 2009 decision to outsource certain of its legal services to the outsourcing firm CPA Global.

The discussion discloses much interesting information about Rio Tinto’s motivations for outsourcing, and about the details of its outsourcing arrangement, particularly respecting quality control.

The potential implications for law firms and legal education, of this kind of outsourcing arrangement seem quite substantial. Rio Tinto’s use of outsourcing seems consistent with the trends identified by Dr. Susskind in his 2008 book, The End of Lawyers?. (See background and commentary on the book here.)

Legal services outsourcing is relevant to legal informatics because such outsourcing is a key context for legal information processing, and often involves the use or development of new legal information technologies.

HT @complexd.

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