PRESS RELEASE FROM SDD GLOBAL: COMPANY ADDS LONDON, BANGALORE OFFICES, EXPANDS CAPABILITIES:

LONDON, May 11, 2008—SDD Global Solutions, the leader in high-end legal services outsourcing to India, has expanded from Mysore and New York into London and Bangalore. Already a “go-to” legal provider for Fortune 100 media, entertainment and other companies in Hollywood and elsewhere in the United States, SDD Global has added not only new offices, but also new service capabilities, including transactional work and patent services.

London Office Opened

Alex Hannell, one of the world’s leading specialists in international media, intellectual property and entertainment transactions, heads SDD Global’s new London office, and its new service division, The Business and Legal Affairs Group. Led and trained by Hannell, with outstanding attorneys working in Mysore, this new department handles the transactions and commercial legal affairs of film and television companies, and it can do the same for all other kinds of companies, which (a) are no longer willing to tolerate the usual outside counsel rates in the West, and/or (b) want another alternative to hiring in-house lawyers.

Before joining SDD Global, Mr. Hannell served as Head of Commercial Affairs for Granada International, the worldwide arm of what is now the U.K.’s largest commercial television company, ITV. He is also a veteran of the pre-eminent London-based law firm, Herbert Smith LLP. From 2002 until 2008, Hannell developed his own roster of film and television clients, including a “who’s who” list of such companies as Warner Brothers and countless others.

Bangalore Patent Office Added

Simultaneously, SDD Global has opened a patent legal services operation in Bangalore, led by IP experts with an extensive track record in the field. SDD Global’s multidisciplinary team of patent agents, scientists, and patent attorneys provides in-depth experience, combined with up-to-date technical knowledge. The team handles IP portfolio creation and management, prior art searches, patentability consulting, infringement analysis, patent drafting and prosecution, valuation and licensing, and a host of other IP services.


New Parent Law Firm, SmithDehn LLP

In other news, SDD Global Solutions is now managed by SmithDehn LLP, the New York and London-based international law firm created by the intellectual property, media, and entertainment attorneys of the former Smith Dornan Dehn PC. Joining these former SDD attorneys at SmithDehn LLP are Alex Hannell in London, former NBC and CBS television in-house counsel Benton Levy, former Chicago Mercantile Exchange Director and Associate General Counsel Patricia Holland, veteran New York trial attorney Kwarma Vanderpuye, U.S. immigration law specialist Priya Kumar, and others.

Says Frank Dehn, a Harvard Law School graduate and managing attorney of SmithDehn’s New York office: “Every modern U.S. law firm is now struggling to figure out its ‘India Strategy.’ We're the only Western law firm that not only has one, but already has been implementing it on the ground.”

Another SmithDehn founder, Columbia Law School graduate Russell Smith, who spends most of his time in Mysore, managing SDD Global Solutions, says: “With its new offices, new practice areas, and new parent law firm, SDD Global is poised to achieve its dream. We want to revolutionize the way legal services are delivered to companies and individuals all over the world.”


More About SDD Global

SDD Global Solutions, the only legal services provider in India managed by a U.S. law firm, offers high-quality legal research, analysis and drafting at a fraction of the traditional cost. Headquartered in the city of Mysore, India, two hours from Bangalore, and with other offices in New York, London, and Bangalore, the company maintains quality and security controls that meet or exceed those of top-tier law firms in the West. In order to maintain the highest standards, SDD Global hires only one out of every 900 job applicants, from a growing talent pool that includes 80,000 English-speaking law graduates in India entering the market each year. Due to the dramatically low cost of living and doing business in Mysore, where SDD Global has its own state-of-the-art office building, the company can significantly reduce costs for its corporate and law firm clients.

As noted in a press release from Columbia Law School (“Is the Future of U.S. Law in India?”), SDD Global Solutions is actively dispelling the stereotype linked to outsourcing, by (a) hiring lawyers in the United States and the United Kingdom to further improve its quality control, supervision and onshore presence, and (b) providing more legal services opportunities for U.S. law firm clients, since the lower costs of those services create a demand for legal work that in many cases would not have otherwise existed.

SDD Global is on the path to becoming in many ways the functional equivalent of the world’s largest and most affordable global law firm. SDD Global is solving one of the most urgent problems of today's businesses, namely, the inefficiencies of having most legal work done in locations that often are among the most expensive, and the least productive.

For more information, please visit www.sddglobal.com For a cover story featuring SDD Global in the latest legal magazine from LexisNexis, please click here.