Susan Hall, the London-based regional IT director at Baker & McKenzie, has been named as the firm's chief information officer (CIO) – the first time that the firm's top IT job has gone to Europe.

The appointment was announced on 1 April at Baker's annual partnership conference in Vienna.

Hall, whose career began at Andersen Consulting, (now Accenture), takes over the running of the global IT function of the world's largest law firm from Craig Courter, who was promoted from CIO to chief operating officer at the beginning of the year. Hall will continue to be based in London, but she told Legal IT that she would now be spending half of her time on the road, mostly in Chicago, where the firm's IT function has traditionally been centred, and in Manila, where Bakers has set up its own dedicated, 'global' document production facility.

Her initial focus would be to complete the ambitious projects started by Courter, notably the shared back-office services and the ongoing global roll-out of the Hummingbird DM 5 document management system.

For many of the firm's offices this project will be their first exposure to document management technology.