Due diligence and litigation discovery are likely to be among the areas affected by the overhaul, which has cost-driven incentives, the firm said. 

The firm already outsources IT, document production, catering, business information and e-business functions to external companies, Legal Week reports. 

Jonathan Brayne, chairman of Allen & Overy’s India Group, who is involved in the firm’s outsourcing working group, said the firm is now establishing exactly what is outsourced. 

“We want to ensure we have best practice and we want to make sure we are learning lessons together,” he told Legal Week. “Every part of the firm is planning to keep costs down.”

The firm has been testing the outsourcing waters for some time, having launched a pilot scheme to outsource most of its documentation work to South Africa in October last year. 

The move follows a similar pilot scheme at Lovells’ in January this year, in which the firm looked at sending all of its documentation work to South Africa.  

As well, Eversheds struck a deal in August last year to outsource all low-end work to India. The firm signed a contract with a third party provider to outsource small commercial contract that were proving too expensive to run in the UK.