Seven support staff are at risk of redundancy at Hogan Lovells as part of the firm's plan to relocate IT support from London to cheap, cheap Johannesburg.

HogLove announced its intention to open a business services centre in Joburg to carry out support work like conflict checking and client due diligence in February following its merger with South African outfit Routledge Modise. The firm said the new base was "well-placed in terms of time zones" and offered "good opportunities for cost savings". HogLove said at the time that roles would be transferred to Johannesburg only "as and when" people leave the firm “in almost all cases”. Unfortunately that caveat means that seven people are now up for the chop.

    London IT staff adopting a new approach to frozen screens yesterday

There’s been an upsurge in cost-cutting at the firm recently. In March it announced plans to open a budget low-cost legal services centre in Birmingham to handle the firm’s “less complex” work. It's a similarly depressing story at other firms. Two weeks ago RollOnFriday broke the news that Ashurst was outsourcing its out-of-hours support staff and placing 17 staff into a redundancy consultation.

A firm spokeswoman declined to comment on the redundancies except to say that the firm was clear when it announced the launch of the business services centre that redundancies were expected.  
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