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Are Paralegal Work and Legal Research Next to Go Offshore?

Information Week reported yesterday that law firms are actively considering sending white collar jobs offshore, where paralegal salaries are between $6 and $8 per hour, while the average in the U.S. is over $17. The statistics for this article were obtained from a research report sponsored by the University of California, Berkeley, Fall 2003, titled The New Wave of Outsourcing. The outsourcing first wave began in the 1980s and focused on manufacturing. The next wave encompasses white collar jobs according to the authors, and is driven by the ubiquity of the Internet and global communications applications. Telecommunications, ISPs, telephone call centers, software design, and other non-manufacturing related sectors are increasingly at risk to outsourcing, due in no small measure to huge discrepancies in U.S. salaries vs. those in Eastern Europe, Asia and Ireland.

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