Starter Kit. Idea 299 of 500. Cluster 15
Legal paperwork done for foreign law firms, since the common law is the same and the lawyers are here
The mechanism, from the book
The proof exists in Malabe. What is missing is a thousand small versions of it.
The first step
Offer three solicitors' firms in Britain a free trial of one defined task, such as document review or drafting a standard contract from their template, returned within 48 hours. Ask each for a written assessment of the work and the price they currently pay for that task. The assessments and the price gap tell you whether a legal-process firm here can win the work.
- Who pays first
- A small common-law firm abroad that pays high rates for document review and drafting, and will pay less for the same work done well here.
- What leaves today
- Lawyers trained in the common law here work for local fees or emigrate, while firms abroad pay far more for the same routine legal work.
Ask first
- Department of the Registrar of Companies. Ask which company form suits a firm doing paperwork for law firms abroad.
- Data Protection Authority. Ask what care is needed when handling clients' confidential legal documents from abroad.
Check before you spend
Whether work done here for a foreign firm counts as practising law, what the firm's own regulator allows, and what indemnity insurance is needed.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a firm abroad pay today for one document review?
- How fast must work be returned to beat their current supplier?
- Which tasks would they never send outside their own office?
A comparison from the book
The British inheritance. Chapter Two
"From the British we got the common law, and courts that however slowly they grind still"
Shared law is the asset: a lawyer here already reads documents the way the firm abroad does.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.