Research Services Offshore Outsourcing Of Legal Issues

Cross-border trade in business services, especially the so-called "IT-enabledservices", is today among the fastest growing areas of international trade. While theindustrial countries are the largest exporters of such services, some of the mostdynamic exporters are developing countries. Even though these developments arecreating a more efficient global division of labor and bringing significant welfaregains for all countries, they will inevitably affect the structure of employment in anumber of importing countries and impose adjustment costs. The result is likely to beprotectionist pressures, some signs of which are already visible.The ongoing negotiations relating to the General Agreement on Trade in Servicesof the Doha Development Agenda offer a valuable opportunity to secure openness.The GATS framework will, however, need to be improved to deal with this mostdynamic area of service offshoring. The negotiations have lost momentum afterCancún, but the interregnum gives World Trade Organization Members time to reflecton the appropriate approach. Therefore, before the GATS negotiations achieveimportant developments, it is still necessary for us to do a careful and in-depthresearch on the GATS adjustments in service offshoring.This paper focuses on several main problems in the GATS adjustments on serviceoffshoring, such as the relationships between GATS mode 1 and mode 2, theinadequacy of the existing GATS initiatives and frameworks, the rules of origin forservices and the two options to secure openness of cross-border trade in services etc.,with a hope that it could make an explicit and significative analysis in this area.