To Cut Expenses, More Firms Are Opening Back Offices

White & Case’s shared services center in Manila is a hive of activity most weeknights and early mornings. “It can get noisy when our U.S. offices are open,” half a world and a 13-hour time difference away, says tech support desk staffer Cesar P., who asked that his full name not be disclosed. At rows of cubicles inside an office block, Cesar and more than a dozen other call center workers field dozens of calls apiece per nine-hour shift from lawyers asking for software help. The 300-person office handles not just IT support, but billing and collection, human resources, risk management and marketing for the 1,895-lawyer global firm.

Providing lawyers with all the business services they need to run their practices is costly: An average of roughly 15 percent of every dollar a firm collects goes to nonlegal staff salaries, according to a recent study by Altman Weil. Since the recession, firms have been increasingly focused on trimming those costs and increasing efficiencies. White & Case’s David Koschik, who spearheaded the back-office center in 2007 as well as a second one in Tampa this past year, won’t say how much the firm is saving by tapping the labor pool in Manila, except that savings are “significant.” Cesar P. and his colleagues, for example, earn $5,400 to $8,400 annually, a tenth of what someone in a comparable job would earn in New York.