CPA Global has appointed a new head of legal service outsourcing (LSO) following the departure of former LSO chief Leah Cooper.

Cooper left the company in November last year for family reasons according to CPA, with the outsourcer's chief financial officer and head of India operations Anand Sharma replacing her as head of global LSO and intellectual property (IP).

Sharma will continue as chief financial officer and India head, and will maintain his position on the company's senior management board alongside his new responsibilities.

CPA has also elevated senior LSO manager Jeff Maddox to managing director of LSO to support Sharma in light of Cooper's departure.

Maddox is based in CPA's Alexandria office in the US. He was previously managing director for CPA Global Ventures, the corporate development arm of CPA, and has also served as chief executive of CPA's North American operations.

Cooper joined CPA in March 2010 from mining giant Rio Tinto, where she was the company's managing attorney. She joined the company shortly after Rio struck a deal with CPA in summer 2009 to outsource low-level legal tasks to India.

The move was projected to reduce Rio Tinto's annual legal spend by 20%, with the mining company estimating the India venture would be seven times cheaper than its lawyers in London.

Cooper's hire was followed by the appointment of former SJ Berwin senior partner David Harrel as chairman of the outsourcing provider in February last year.

A CPA spokesperson said: "Leah left CPA Global in November after deciding to concentrate her time and energy on her personal and family life. In her time at CPA, Leah did much to develop our LSO business and to help establish CPA as a leader in the sector.

"CPA remains fully committed to LSO as we believe there is excellent potential for the business and the sector as a whole. Moving forward, CPA will be making additional investments across the company in order to further improve the breadth of products and services we provide to clients – both in our IP management and software businesses as well as our broader legal services outsourcing business."

Meanwhile, the sale of CPA to private equity firm Cinven was also announced last month, valuing the outsourcer at around $1.5bn (£953m).

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, DLA Piper and Travers Smith took lead roles on the sale, which saw London-based mezzanine lender Intermediate Capital Group, which acquired CPA two years ago, reach an agreement to sell the company to Cinven for an undisclosed sum.

DLA and Travers both advised CPA, while Freshfields acted for longstanding client Cinven.