• About BLD
  • Our Team
  • News & Events
  • Careers
  • Locations
  • Why BLD
  • Partners
• Services
  • Legal Staffing
  • Review Facilities
  • Project Management
  • Onshore Review
  • Offshore Review
• Case Studies
  • IP Litigation
  • Internal Investigation
  • Pharmaceuticals Products Liability
  • Trade Secret Litigation
  • Wage & Hour Class Action
  • Foreign Language Reviews
  • DOJ Investigation
• Training
  • Training Schedule
  • CLE: The Document Review Process — Step 1
  • CLE: Intro to Attorney-Client Privilege and Privacy
  • CLE: Managing Highly Productive Document Reviews
  • CLE: Changes to the FRCP
• Candidates
  • Join Our Team
  • Update Status/Resume
  • Online Timesheets
  • Training
• Clients
  • Our Commitment
  • Client CLE & Training
  • Project Reports
  • RFQ

Offshore Review

High Quality, Low Cost & Bar-Admitted

Thinking about going offshore? For law firms and their clients who require supplementing their review capabilities with low-cost, bar-admitted offshore attorney reviewers, BLD provides a scalable and secure offshore review service in Manila, Philippines. BLD's Offshore Review is led by Martin Pascual, Esq., a US educated and trained attorney who has relocated to Manila to head up our offshore operations, including overseeing the quality and productivity of our offshore review team. BLD's offshore services focus on first pass review and litigation support.

Services

• Electronic and Hard Copy Document Review
• Issue Coding
• Objective Coding
• Deposition Transcript Summaries
• Privilege Log Preparation
• Legal Drafting Support

Why Philippines?

BLD located its offshore review facility in the Philippines after carefully reviewing options in several other countries. These important factors distinguish the Philippines from other offshore review locations:

The Philippines is the world’s 3rd largest English speaking country with over 95% of the population literate in English.

• Elementary through college education systems are modeled on the US educational system. Additionally, the Philippines and US have congruent legal education. Like the US, a Philippine law degree is a graduate degree. A law graduate must have a 4-year primary degree before attending law school.
• The Philippine government is modeled after the US, with a democratic constitution and three branches of government.
• As a former US colony, the Philippines embraces US pop culture giving it a cultural and linguistic affinity with the US that is not present in other outsourcing destinations. As a result of a more similar accent and linguistic affinity, more customer service outsourcers are migrating their operations to the Philippines.
• The Philippines and US have similar legal systems. Most Philippine laws closely mirror US laws. Like the US, Filipino lawyers must adhere to a code of professional ethics and can be sanctioned by the local and national bar associations.
• The Philippines has a national bar exam, something that is not true in other outsourcing destinations. The Philippines national bar exam has a pass rate between 18% and 28% depending on the year, and is conducted over four weekends over the course of one month every September, making it one of the world’s most difficult bar exams.
• Philippine law graduates can immediately sit for the New York, California, and Virginia Bar exams without having to satisfy durational requirements.
• Philippine legal practice is similar to the US, with both transactional and litigation practices using both common law and statutory law. US legal decisions are persuasive in Philippine courts.
• Document reviewers are licensed attorneys trained in the Philippine legal system modeled similarly on the U.S. legal system, where precedential authority is utilized, where U.S. case law is cited as persuasive authority, and where there is a cultural affinity.
• BLD Philippines attorneys have all passed the Philippine Bar, which has a less than 30% pass rate. Further, all BLD Philippines attorneys have graduated from the top law schools, including Ateneo de Manila, University of the Philippines, and San Beda College of Law. BLD Philippines attorneys have also worked at the top law firms in the country, including Siguion Reyna Montecillo & Ongsiako, SyCip Salazar Hernandez & Gatmaitan, and Romulo Mabanta Buenaventura Sayoc & De Los Angeles.

BLD Philippines

Our experience shows that recruiting and training are the most significant contributors to quality. Our reviewers in the Philippines are:

• Experienced JDs from fully accredited Philippine law schools; several have also pursued legal training in the US
• Trained in document review, privilege, and the law and facts of the case
• Supervised by a Project Manager admitted to practice in the U.S.

Protecting client data is paramount and BLD uses multiple layers of security to help ensure that clients' data remains confidential:

• Physical security -- access is controlled with swipe cards, passcodes, and video surveillance systems. Employees are searched and inspected upon entry and exit of the facilities.
• Equipment security: Computer terminals unlock with fingerprint identification, there is no internet access and no portable storage devices are permitted in the review space
• Data security: data encryption, SSL, emergency disaster data storage procedures, third-party host data repository
• Staff security: Background and reference checks are done on all employees.

Our processes incorporate many of the ISO 9000 quality management certification principles, which demand thorough preparation and documentation of review guidelines, reviewer training, and auditable quality measurement and correction systems.