Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

Hogan Lovells announced Friday that it has opened a new center in Phoenix focused on document review services, turning to law company Elevate for support in running the operation.

The Arizona legal delivery center is the first Hogan Lovells litigation support site in North America, joining Birmingham, England; Berlin; and Sao Paulo. The firm also operates a center in Cape Town, South Africa, in a partnership with Cognia Law, and is in the process of exploring other locations.

"We have a goal of having legal delivery centers around the globe," said Dennis Tracey, head of the firm's litigation practice in the Americas. "We call it a 'follow the sun' strategy.'"

After the firm determined it wanted to set up a center within the U.S., it initiated a careful review of potential markets. Phoenix emerged as a leader with regard to legal talent.

"In this context, where you have a need for good talent that you're going to integrate into a global law firm and expansion capacity,  you need to make sure there's a deep resource pool," Tracey added.

While the firm established its support centers in Birmingham, Sao Paolo and Berlin on its own, it elected to work with an outside provider this time. Elevate, which has a track record in assisting the firm through flexible lawyering service HL Elevate, won a competition among potential vendors. The company has an existing location in Phoenix.

The center hosts 20 Hogan Lovells attorneys, who are trained by the firm, use Hogan Lovells hardware and technology, and are supervised by firm lawyers. Elevate handles site logistics and assists with hiring and HR. The company also can make its workforce available in response to heightened demand.

"As we have in our other centers, here we have both fixed and flexible resources," said Stephen Allen, the firm's global head of Innovation and digital. "It's much easier to do that in a quality way if the flexible resources are inside the tent. Elevate can help us scale quickly as we need to."

Tracey said the move also stemmed from clients pushing for greater capabilities within the firm.

"We've seen through Birmingham and our other centers that clients really like to have document review capabilities that are internal to the firm and can rely on consistent quality, rather than using third-party centers, where lawyers are working for multiple clients," he said.

According to Rachel Dabydoyal, the firm's head of alternative service delivery, the new lawyers have hit the ground running. A month since the center launched, they are on their third document review project.

"We're seeing traction already with our clients," she said.

Hogan Lovells already has a back office center focused on professional services in Louisville, Kentucky.

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