Tuesday, January 29, 2008

David Perla - Anti-American Traitor



David Perla (UPenn undergrad/J.D.) in a vain attempt to gain publicity and promote his traitorous and fledging outsourcing business, boasts about shipping American legal jobs overseas in a recent law.com article: http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1200996336809

"In {David Perla's} view, the temporary lawyers typically hired to perform document review on major litigation have minimal skills and zero motivation. In contrast, Pangea3 can attract the best and the brightest young lawyers in India, fluent in English and trained in English common law. Perla said clients have held "bake-offs" in which the Pangea3's Indian lawyers were asked to perform the same tasks as U.S. contract lawyers. He said the Indians soundly trounced the Americans."


Perla grossly generalizes and unfairly attacks the intelligence and work-ethic of my fellow American middle-class colleagues.

As a fellow blogger so aptly put it, "I dare Mr. Perla to walk into a contract review and say that to young attorneys' faces. I suppose I could craft a similar mold for Mr. Perla. The greedy entrepreneur who views himself as superior to most of his own colleagues and uses it as a justification for shipping American jobs overseas to be performed cheaply for his own profit." http://wickedwords.blogspot.com/2008/01/my-progress-and-outsourcing-rant.html

71 comments:

Anonymous said...

Stay away from law school, kids. The ABA will require you to attend one of their high priced schools with their huge libraries and plushly paid professors.

When you get out with a mountain of debt however, that same ABA will sell you down the river. Outsourcing businesses like Pangea are frequently praised in ABA publications.

Bunch of greedy snakes.

Anonymous said...

Good work. Under David Perla, this listing is already on the 1st page of the google cache. Now, let's get it included in his linked profile. We should also call Lou Dobbs.

Anonymous said...

dear david:

do you take americans over their in India ?? when can i start. i love curry....

sincerely,
65% of the people with a JD

Anonymous said...

This is why lawyers are scum...oh wait, I'm one too...argh

Anonymous said...

this guy is so mean..... his quote that document reviewers are just the people who couldn't make it as lawyers really hurts my feelings.... i officially challenge a pangea3 lawyer to a document battle !!!!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Perhaps in India they know the difference between their and there.

Anonymous said...

excellent catch sir..... i have decided to do some extra documents.... can i still go to India ???

Anonymous said...

pretty sad-that guy seems so greedy-the indians are probably exploited too

Anonymous said...

A "bake off"? How utterly disgraceful...this guy should be imprisoned and have his law license stripped...but they lionize him like the conquering hero.

The law is a doomed profession for all but the fortunate few, for the rest of it's just a gutter dive of crumb feeding.

Like much of our country, the legal profession has been reduced to rubble by wanton greed and disdain for its practicioners.

Time to get out kids, this ship is sinking fast, we're training Indian lawyers to take our jobs to save a few pennies. Can you think of anything more stupid and self-defeating?

Anonymous said...

Wow. The face of greed and evil. What an S.O.B.

Anonymous said...

I wish this smirking, toothy A-hole a really nasty case of dysentery for every one of us who relies on this work for our survival. It doesn't matter if you are fresh out of school or a veteran who has left a traditional legal career for other reasons. This man is a sick example of what is destroying this country. Not only do we not mfg. much anymore, but we are also losing our professional services too. God help us all from this man and others like him.

Anonymous said...

But there are many downsides to outsourcing, this being simply one of them....Let's hope some data is lost and confidentiality breached, lol.

http://in.reuters.com/article/topNews/idINIndia-31677820080130

Anonymous said...

on a flight to India now.... does anybody know the names of any temp agencies in Bombay ???

Anonymous said...

Sadly, we have given ourselves the bad rep we currently have. I have sat next to tons of doc rev's who sat surfing the net, talking on the phone or even sleeping. Best of all, they billed for that time.

Anonymous said...

What barred US attys should do is set up pickets and protests outside all corporations and law firms engaged in outsourcing. We're making it too easy for them, there is no resistance.

Anonymous said...

surfing the internet ??? chatting on the phone.... up to document management to crack the whip... some slight supervision will help with those areas... if you don't mind the people, they will do what they want... they teach that in kindergarden....

i bet a dollar the india document reviewers surf plenty of internet too...

Anonymous said...

I'm guessing that 9 out of 10 of you are posting these messages from your document review assignments. Pitiful. Get back to work, bitches.

Anonymous said...

9 out of 10 ...... that is a pretty high number..... sort of impossible to document review straight for hours upon hours..... makes one an angry robot who gets caffiene headaches....


do they have espressos in India ??? taking the red tags off the documents here today.... do they do that in India too ???

Anonymous said...

Am not posting from a doc review because I CANNOT EVEN GET ON ONE now thanks to this jerk and others like him.

Anonymous said...

would anybody care to purchase my JD ??? willing to sell it for a toll collector position ....

Anonymous said...

How cool would it be if we all sent resume in to this clown asking for work? Oh - never mind. We are American lawyers who did not all got to Penn( Guess he didn't have the "smarts" for a top law school like Harvard, etc...). Pangea wouldn't give us the time of day.

Anonymous said...

I am applying for Pangea right NOW !!!!!!!! my gig is ending...

Anonymous said...

I just checked PANGEAS's website. The only US hire they post is for a turncoat patent attorney to sign off on all the outsourced patent stuff being done in India. SICK SICK SICK

Anonymous said...

maybe i can be a gopher for coffee for their "attorneys".... they must need caffiene like their american counterparts...

maynelaw said...

No use trying to vilify David Perla for surfing the waves of commerce.

If in fact there is a reason to use local review attorneys over off-shored foreign attorneys, the jobs will remain in this country. I'm all for making sure that we do our best to keep ourselves up to date on recent legal changes, technology and whatever else gives local attorneys the edge over foreign reviewers.

Major law firm associates should be just as scared by these developments as contract attorneys. It will become harder and harder to hide and justify their overpaid work when clients see these developments in the market. It just takes longer to affect associates since they have the firms covering for them.

Anonymous said...

What a piece of dickshit - I hope bad karma follows Perla and when he is out of business and in disgrace, he also gets ass-rot from all deh curry cakes he eats at the bake-off. Fuckhead...

Anonymous said...

1:58 PM - you are making a false argument. If the ABA and state bars came out against outsourcing and wrote stringent requirements, it would virtually end tomorrow. Because the big firms who control the bar associations are still making money it, no action has been taken. Attorneys are not part of free trade economy, we are licensed members of a guild, a guild that gives us no protection.

When the bar orgs wake up, we'll cut down Perla and his ilk overnight.

maynelaw said...

The firms aren't making big money off of off-shoring. The client companies are pushing the concept for cost savings. GE sent a big chunk of their in-house legal department to India a while back. Then they started asking questions about why their outside counsel were paying $X per hour for review attorneys when they could get them for $1/3X overseas. The Firms don't say a thing for fear of losing the client and for fear of the client looking too closely at the bills.

I agree, though, that it's only the Bar organizations that have a chance at controlling this. Not much of one, but a chance.

Anonymous said...

time to check the nursing schools people !!!!

Anonymous said...

Instead of organizing a union, why don’t you organize a competing agency that does things differently than update, lexolution, ect. You know that clients have a real (and probably valid concern) about the work quality and diligence of temps. And you know that temps have legitimate complaints about not having benefits, a fixed salary, ect. Why not set up an agency that offers permanent salaried positions (with benefits) to the best temps. You’d be able to offer clients a core group of consistently high performing salaried “temps”, and your hourly temps would presumably work harder in hopes of earning a salaried position. There would be some obvious challenges in setting this up (the foremost being financing), but if you could get it off the ground I bet you could do pretty well. As your agency gains a reputation for offering superior workers, you might even be able to charge higher rates.

Anonymous said...

that is a pretty good idea....

Anonymous said...

best article yet! with the doc reviews going to India, who's gonna WISH they were working in Newark or at Shearman??! Heh heh heh.

Anonymous said...

heh heh, don't worry 6:48 your job is going to India too :)

Anonymous said...

hey people:

I am in India. Long flight... So where are the jobs ?? Sort of hot over here.....

Anonymous said...

David Perla's life is about to get much, much worse. This is not a threat, it is a promise.

Anonymous said...

Major law firm associates should be just as scared by these developments as contract attorneys. It will become harder and harder to hide and justify their overpaid work when clients see these developments in the market. It just takes longer to affect associates since they have the firms covering for them.

Exactly -- if document review can be done in India, then so can all of the "sophisticated" stuff that BigLaw associates are doing. There's no reason why all of these "brilliant" Indian attorneys can't be doing M&A, tax, securities, etc. work for a fraction of the price of their American counterparts.

Anonymous said...

He's kinda cute! Think he's single?

Anonymous said...

Apparently, the douche bag lives in manhattan. If the guy hates Americans so much and thinks they are lazy, why doesn't he get the fuck out? Go to India. I am sure the Indians would be very receptive to the biglaw caste structure.

Anonymous said...

Much bigger issue here, folks.

The issue is the systematic destruction of the middle class in the US.

The middle class poses the last remaining threat to the Elite's total domination of the society. The Elites want to eliminate it.

The goal is a two-class society: the rich lords and the serfs. It's actually a throwback to feudal times.

Perla is a peon in this game. Yes - he deserves a tremendous physical beating for his actions, words, and overall arrogant Ivy League attitude. But he's just a little piece of garbage who's been sanctioned by the big pieces of garbage and their "free trade," "global economy," and "one world government" goals. Destroy him and they'll be another one just like him to take his place in a second.

If you really want to take your frustrations out for this outsourcing mess, shoot an international banker. They're the real menace, not this Perla Peon.

(But don't get me wrong: it sure would be fun to wipe that shit-eating grin off his face with a baseball bat.....)

Anonymous said...

Look at this!

We have excellent opportunities for recent law school graduates who are looking to gain experience with prestigious government agency. Please forward resumes immediately to office@jennifertemps.com. All positions are temporary (long-term).




Location: Manhattan
Compensation: $12/Hour
Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
Please, no phone calls about this job!
Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

Anonymous said...

Look at this!

We have excellent opportunities for recent law school graduates who are looking to gain experience with prestigious government agency. Please forward resumes immediately to office@jennifertemps.com. All positions are temporary (long-term).




Location: Manhattan
Compensation: $12/Hour
Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
Please, no phone calls about this job!
Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

Anonymous said...

MALPRACTICE! I don't care if Indian law schools allegedly teach English common law. Sending legal work overseas is malpractice. In India, they may speak English, but they do not understand American English.

I once applied for a mortgage through Citibank, and they had the nerve to have my application evaluated by a group located in India. The morons in India didn't understand what I told them, and then turned around and claimed I lied on my mortgage application. I told them to cancel my application and I will never do business with Citibank again. I doubt their lawyers understand American culture any better than the "financial consultants" I spoke with.

Maybe this crap will stop once one of these Fortune 100 companies get sued by shareholders because an Indian company messes up a lawsuit.

Anonymous said...

Quality of work product is not the goal. Cost cutting is.

The best we can hope for at this point is massive destabilization in that area of the world, i.e. Pakistan attacking India (they're basically at war with each other and have been since the British partitioned India. For those of you unfamiliar with this history, look up "Partition of India" in Wikipedia).

Best of all would be if Pakistan nukes India. [Try outsourcing to a radioactive wasteland Perla.] Of course, that would probably start World War III and we won't have to worry about reviewing documents or making a living anymore.

Sounds harsh, but we're talking about our livlihoods here. "Civilized" and "Cultured" people tend to turn into vicious animals when their livlihoods and families are threatened. The veneer of culture and civility become excess baggage when the game turns into "Kill or be Killed" and/or "Kill the other guy or starve."

Sorry, India.

Anonymous said...

Our country is dead. R.I.P.

A hundred years ago, people would not have put up with this outsourcing shit. In the early part of this century, working class Americans rallied around people like William Jennings Bryan and marched off with pitchforks against the gold standard, the railroads, and other corporate interests. Today, your typical American just sits back, rallies around Ann Coulter, and votes for corporate minded lackey morons like George W.

Outsourcing, oil wars, and Bernanke's constant bubble blowing with funny money is destroying this country.

Anonymous said...

ATTENTION UPDATE LEGAL "STEPFORD WIVES":

STOP WHORING AROUND AND FIND YOURSELVES RICH HUSBANDS!

SOON ALL THE DOCUMENT REVIEW WORK WILL BE OUTSOURCED TO INDIA!

USE THE CONSIDERABLE SKILLS YOU'VE ACQUIRED FROM YEARS OF WHORING AROUND NYC AND LURE IN SOME SUCKER WITH BUCKS TO MARRY YOU!

DON'T WORRY: YOU CAN CUT HIM OFF FROM THE SEX AND RESUME YOUR WHORING WAYS ONCE YOU HAVE HIM HELPLESS, CUCKHOLDED, AND IN YOUR DISGUSTING LOUIS VUITTON CLUTCHES. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS BE MONOGAMOUS FOR A YEAR, TOPS. YOU CAN DO IT!!

Anonymous said...

Apparently, the douche bag lives in manhattan. If the guy hates Americans so much and thinks they are lazy, why doesn't he get the fuck out? Go to India. I am sure the Indians would be very receptive to the biglaw caste structure.

From the law.com article:

Leading LPOs do offer many attractions to Indian lawyers. The top law firms in India tend to be family affairs, with few chances for advancement for those lacking the proper connections. On the other hand, LPOs offer a technology startup-like environment. At Pangea3, that even includes stock options.

So, apparently, the Indian lawyers are doing doc review for the same reason us American lawyers are -- because the Indian equivalent to American BigLaw is also elitist and inbred. In other words, the partners at Swamibamicurry, Patel & Gandhi are just as snooty and particular as Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Plus ca change, ...

Also, something tells me that these Indian doc review attorneys are every bit as happy with their lot as their American counterparts. Just because they shuck and jive and smile for Massa doesn't mean that they REALLY love him or are unaware that they are really fucked. And if they act up, then they may find that THEIR "great jobs" are outsourced to Nairobi or Lagos (where they also speak fluent English and have common law legal systems.)

Small comfort for us, maybe, but human nature is human nature whether it's in NYC or Bangalore.

Anonymous said...

lol, we have enough nigerians here to do doc review, now way it will ever go to a place like lagos...these guys have already ruined it for the rest of the country...nice try though. The rule of law is a wee bit stronger in India than Nigeria.

It would be funny though, to see the look on the snotnose associate's face when s/he is told they have to Lagos to manage a doc review....LOL!

Anonymous said...

Dear 10:15 pm. I could have written that! It is terrifying what is actually going on.

Anonymous said...

I love how this inevitable attempt at a business model brings out the racist in some of you morons. Shows the kind of character you really have. I'm not going to say that that's why you can't get anything besides a doc review job, but it really does the image of the site, or more importantly your cause, any favors. Attack this development on its merits, not with your overt racism.

Anonymous said...

"What people fail to realize is that the elites manipulate the economy for their benefit. The Great Depression was created for the enrichment of those same elites, people like the Rockefellers, and Dupont etc. They MADE money during the depression. The same thing is happening now as they are attempting to build a World Government. There is going to be a complete global economic collapse sooner or later. If things today are any indication, it will be sooner."

Anonymous said...

can we find out where this chooch lives in manhattan? i'd love to see him sob when he sees his own blood.

Anonymous said...

Police in Gurgaon, India, recently busted an illegal transplant racket that allegedly removed kidneys from up to 500 poor laborers and sold their organs to clients.


Great. Maybe Perla and his ilk think we should all sell a kidney to pay our bills? Nah - they can steal them free in India! :-(

Anonymous said...

A search of public records in the New York City Department of Finance, Office of the City Register Site shoes 10 listings under the name "David Perla" if anyone cares. Of course, we are all so stupid no one could navigate that and find our friend anyway I guess.

Anonymous said...

“Exactly -- if document review can be done in India, then so can all of the "sophisticated" stuff that BigLaw associates are doing. There's no reason why all of these "brilliant" Indian attorneys can't be doing M&A, tax, securities, etc. work for a fraction of the price of their American counterparts.”

I disagree. Every company that hires Manhattan lawyers at large firms already has the option of saving 50% on their M&A, tax and securities work by hiring the best firms in Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, Missouri and Minnesota. They pay a premium for Manhattan lawyers, in part because bad work in any of these areas will cost a lot more than the legal bills. For capital markets / securities work, hiring a top firm is also important for marketing purposes.

Anonymous said...

Yes, but the India trained lawyers are soooooooo much smarter than us slacker Americans. That's why they live under crippling overcrowding, questionable health conditions and huge portions of their country living beneath even 3rd world poverty standards. Yes, they are really a lot smarter than us.

The only reason they are used is because these ultra cheap american corporations demand that the firms use them. I'm happy that the Internet cable in the Indian Ocean has been severed, let's hope it raises the cost of doing business for these turncoats.

Anonymous said...

11:29 AM - please take your race baiting banter elsewhere, we're tird of your ignorant accusations.

Anonymous said...

There is no real comparison. The Indian employees are employed in positions that are in that area well paid and fairly prestigious - to the point that office space in Mumbai and other centers is filled up and very costly. There is terrible attrition among the outsourcing firms as good employees move from one to another to get readily available still higher-paying jobs. One could ask, why pay more for Americans who seem (reality aside)to be difficult and ungrateful?

Anonymous said...

this guy is a straight up racist. Need to file a claim with the U.S.E.E.O.C. and shut this jackhole down. Oh and 100 years, ago, they would not have marched, they would have gotten a couple of bombs and offed this guy. Labor relations used to be out of control, entire cities on fire. Unions, whether you like em or not, helped bring alot more harmony and stability to the market. If this kind of thing keeps up, eventually violence will return.

Anonymous said...

"11:29 AM - please take your race baiting banter elsewhere, we're tird of your ignorant accusations."

I'm the one race baiting? Have you READ the comments? My thoughts in that comment extend no further than the comments on this site, so I'd really like to know what is ignorant about them. Whether you'd like to believe me or not, I'm on your side - I'd just much rather see everyone attacking the actual problems (which happens more often than not on here) instead of delving into some of these ugly knee-jerk emotional responses that are racist in nature.

Anonymous said...

It seems that some enterprising attorney should undertake an "investigative piece". That is, discover what is the relationship, if any, between the New York Law Journal and its owners/BODs et al, and Skadden Arps or any other entity for which Perla worked or has been associated. Somewhere in my past in NYC, I came across information that linked Strategic's original founding (in early 1990's) to former Skadden attorneys/partners, and that there is a link directly to the owners of NYLJ from Skadden and into the Asssociation of the Bar of the City of New York (and we all know its audience e.g. big NYC firms).
The fact that the editors of the NYLJ did not drop certain copy from that story tells me they agreed with the "message" and viewpoint. Does this border on a tort since it was published of a "class" of attorneys, each with identical licensing credentials of those at big firms? Seems something should be considered to be "actionable" buried deep in this "story". It would be refreshing if the partners at the large law firm who hire contract attorneys weighed on this - since they have a stake. Just how would their Fortune 500 clients react if they knew that we mere "unmotivated, washed up, useless" attorneys (impliedly) had determinations made in their cases (during doc review) that might have affected the outcome? I wonder how former CEOs now sitting in the pen would feel if they knew
a large percentage of the work that got them sitting there the rest of their lives resulted from a bunch of us low lives making calls on docs either to help or hurt them......the best we can hope for is that law firms hire permanent discovery staff attorneys, pay them benefits, and stop paying the agencies, instead, paying us directly.

Anonymous said...

David Perla comes across as exploitatitive, arrogant, and extraordinarily ignorant of the plight of many lawyers who work as contract attorneys for their own personal reasons. David Perla has somehow combined the universal image of over-aggressive lawyers with the greedy businessman mindset of outsourcing. David Perla, you exhibit the unfettered greed that has sadly begun America's great decline. You have no shame, no conscience, but mostly you have no clue. Not everybody is willing to sell out American jobs like you. Your greed is unfortunate, but perhaps one day you will come to realize how foolish you were to be controlled exclusively by the Dollar.

Anonymous said...

What intrigues me is the "bake off". Were the US contract attorneys told they were coding for their lives? Probably not, but I'm sure the Indian "attorneys" were well aware.

It was probably the worst kind of unethical circle jerk imaginable, a stacked deck designed to steal work away from American attorneys and give it to unlicensed foreigners. Unforgivable and unspeakable.

TTT, do you have a hall of shame for assholes like this?

maynelaw said...

Hey, are one of you out there cutting internet cables to India because of this?

Anonymous said...

Will legal process outsourcing (LPO) grow in 2007? Will LPO vendors consolidate? When will law departments and law firms “go public” with their offshoring? These are some of the questions addressed in a new article.

Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO): 2007 And Beyond by Mark Ross, with contributions by Ron Friedmann and Neeraja Kandala address these questions. Mark Ross is a UK solicitor and Director at LawScribe and blogger at http://blog.law-scribe.com/; Ron Friedmann is Senior Vice President, Marketing at Integreon and Neeraja Kandala is a Senior Research Analyst with ValueNotes, a company that has done an excellent job tracking and analyzing the LPO market. This article first appeared at Mark Ross’ blog and was subsequently published by Immigration Daily (ILW.COM) in January 2008

Anonymous said...

This guy sounds like just another cheap, talentless hack peddling lawyer jobs to the third world. He should go up on the wall of shame with Perla. A quote from this monkey's blog.


"Our offshore attorneys will be trained and certified on IQWEST's award winning hosting solutions. I’m confident that this partnership will assist us in providing law firms and legal departments with a one-stop solution for the most advanced and cost-effective document review available."

Anonymous said...

Perla should be crucified by the ABA for this crap. Yet he is probably glad handing it with the officers as we speak. Why did I do this to myself? At least if I'd joined a real union like the boilermakers, I would get honest representation!

Anonymous said...

Why not boycot GE, Dell, and other consumers of off-shoring, which are driving this trend? Law firms dance to the tune of their clients, NOT vice-versa.

Anonymous said...

The sad thing is the outsourced legal work is cost effective and better executed than lawyers in America. The thing is firms would pay lawyers in US money if it meant quality but they cannot even deliver on that.

Anonymous said...

YouTube clip on Indian Lawyers - interesting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt71TnT2eXI

I'm trying to figure out what being a lawyer in India really means. It seems to be an undergraduate degree (LLB)?

Is there any bar admission process?
Any English language proficiency examination?

Check out this YouTube clip - apparently people can claim to be lawyers just by having gotten an LLB, yet have no experience in legal practice nor any formal bar admission process or filtering for quality. Also, I honestly am having trouble understanding some of the Indian laywers being interviewed, which leads me to thing there needs to be some minimum level of language screening.

92557 Family Law said...

One lesson learned is that, at least for some people, contracts are made to be ignored or broken as fits the mood of the individual.

92881 Custody Lawyer said...

Quality of work product is not the goal. Cost cutting is.