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Legalwise Brings Offshore Legal Outsourcing Services to the Canadian Market
[February 13, 2008]

Legalwise Brings Offshore Legal Outsourcing Services to the Canadian Market


(Marketwire (English) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Feb. 13, 2008) - Following on the heels of a rapidly growing trend in the U.S. and U.K., Legalwise Outsourcing Inc. today introduced offshore legal outsourcing services to the Canadian market. By providing offshore legal services through an outsourced model to law firms and in-house lawyers across Canada, Legalwise is lowering the cost of labour-intensive legal tasks.



"As the first Canadian company to bring offshore legal services through an outsourced model to Canada, we're finally giving law firms and in-house lawyers across the country access to the types of services the rest of the world has been using for several years," said Gavin Birer, founder of Legalwise. "Now time-consuming and repetitive but essential legal tasks can be completed without our clients having to invest in overhead, infrastructure, or additional resources. It's a model that makes perfect sense in an age where businesses are demanding greater value for their money from their lawyers."

Legalwise provides its clients with access to a team of 430 lawyers based in Mumbai and Punei in India, each of which is fully trained and qualified in English common law. The lawyers have varying levels of experience and areas of expertise, and their work is vetted for quality control by lawyers in Canada. "There are tremendous similarities between the Canadian and Indian legal systems and education, which ensures every lawyer on our team is well equipped to undertake legal support services that are easily outsourced," explains Birer.


Legalwise lawyers operate as an extension of each client's legal team to provide a variety of services for litigation and corporate/commercial purposes such as document review and drafting, contract management, lease abstracting, due diligence, research and more. The time difference between Canada and India allows offshore team members to work overnight to dramatically improve turnaround times.

Legalwise provides services that are flexible enough to address the needs of legal departments and law firms of all sizes on an ad hoc or ongoing basis. Not only can teams be assigned to handle high volume work for larger law firms and legal departments; they can also provide support to smaller law firms and legal departments that simply cannot afford to hire junior lawyers and paralegals. Offshore legal services can save between 30 to 70 per cent in costs while improving speed and delivery of service. All services provided by Legalwise are billed on an hourly basis without any minimum commitments.

Legalwise was founded by Gavin Birer, a Canadian lawyer with extensive experience as a corporate commercial and technology lawyer working in private practice and as in-house counsel. Prior to bringing the concept of offshore legal outsourcing services to Canada, Gavin was Vice President, Legal & Business Affairs for Travelex Americas, the world's largest non-bank foreign exchange company. At Travelex, Gavin oversaw all legal work in Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Brazil, including corporate commercial transactions, mergers and acquisitions, contracts, strategic alliances, partnerships, new products and services, litigation and Intellectual Property. Prior to Travelex, he worked for McMillan Binch Mendelsohn LLP in the Corporate department; and Goodman and Carr LLP in the Entrepreneurial Corporate department. Gavin is called to the Ontario Bar and is admitted to practice law in the Supreme Court of South Africa. He has an LLM degree in E-Business Law from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University.

Members of the Legalwise Advisory Board include Ganesh Natarajan and George B. Hefferan III - founders of Mindcrest Inc., a pioneer in legal outsourcing in the United States.

About Legalwise Outsourcing Inc.

Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Legalwise is a Canadian legal services provider. The company provides a variety of outsourced legal services to law firms and in-house lawyers across Canada through a team of English Common Law lawyers based in Mumbai and Punei in India. Legalwise serves the diverse needs of clients in multiple industry sectors across the country. For information, visit www.legalwise.ca.

Contact:

Echo CommunicationsPress Contact:Jodi Echakowitz(905) 709-9600Email: [email protected]

? 2007 - Marketwire

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