Obama Donors Update : Big Law Firm Baker & McKenzie names site for second big overseas back office

Crain's Chicago Business reports:

Baker & McKenzie LLP disclosed the location — Belfast, Northern Ireland — of a second back office to help it cut costs and improve client service, crucial components of competing successfully with other giant law firms.

Northern Ireland’s regional development agency is subsidizing the project with approximately $2.1 million in job-creation incentives, Baker confirmed.

Baker opened its first “global services center” in 2000 in Manila and now has more than 600 employees in the Philippines capital, it said. It expects the Belfast office opening next month to have 120 professionals within a year and up to 250 in three years. Initially about two-thirds of them will focus on business services and the rest will include lawyers and paralegals.

Baker's move reflects a trend among law firms to include core legal services, not just support functions, in such efficiency moves, said Liam Brown, a consultant and chairman of Elevate Services Inc. in Los Angeles.

"Corporate clients are increasingly demanding that law firms use the right people with the right skills, working in the right location at the right price — tied together by effective project management,” he said.

A second back office gives a law firm like Baker more flexibility in deciding where to send work, providing another time zone and legal jurisdiction, not to mention insurance against interruption of either site's output.

No word yet on this from Senator Dick Durbin. Click on the table , Baker employees "contributed" a lot of money to Barack Obama. Baker is a big Democrat party donor who seems to not share in the the Durbin idea that taxes are about paying your "fair share".