Lawyers will protect themselves from outsourcing

Half Sigma gleefully predicts that much U.S. legal research will soon be outsourced to other countries. But I don't think lawyers will ever allow this.

You can't legally practice law in a state unless you have passed that state's bar exam. And you usually can't take a bar exam unless you have spent three years in an American law school.

If outsourcing ever starts to significantly impinge on U.S. lawyers' incomes then American lawyers will start to worry about the quality of outsourced legal work. They will then decide that the only way to protect client's interests is to require that the type of legal work that had been previously outsourced must now be done only by those who have passed a bar exam.