London paper the Evening Standard has run a scare story on legal jobs going to India today, which makes a welcome change on the paper's usual stories on transport chaos and terrorism.

FoxMandal Little's (FML) outsourcing arm in particular, will supposedly be single-handedly responsible for taking away 1,000 UK lawyers' jobs by the end of the year, according to a quick extrapolation done by the Evening Standard on the back of a napkin.

As far as Legally India understands it, FML's outsourcing venture Legal Circle is still one of the smaller operations in the market but that should not put a halt to ambition.

Legal Circle's outsourcing head Soumitro Chatterjee told the Evening Standard that he had met 10 UK firms and added: "All of them are thinking of creating between 50 to 100 seats [jobs]."

Is the papercounting FML's chickens before they've hatched, perhaps? No, 10 times 100 equals 1,000. That'll make a headline.

Most Evening Standard readers are not excited by the prospect, however remote.

"Outsourcing work to India is not good," writes Jan Need from Romford in the on-line comments. "It would probably be a lot easier to do [the work] in London in the first place. The main reason for all this is obvious. £6,000 for a lawyer in Mumbai £70,000+ for a London lawyer. Need I say more?"

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