Hogan Lovells is to launch a business services centre in Johannesburg, following its merger with South African firm Routledge Modise in December.

The centre will be in the same building as the firm's new South African office and will be joined up with the firm's back office functions in London and the US. It is expected to be up and running in mid-2014 with the first services in conflict checking, client due diligence and research.

The firm said it is working with its new SA colleagues to set up the service and is beginning the recruitment process, with around 20 available roles in the inital phase.

Hogan Lovells regional managing partner for UK and Africa, Susan Bright said: "We have concluded that a significant number of the business services we receive need to remain close to our lawyers. However, it is also clear that we have a number of roles that can be easily performed from a remote location but that in order to provide high quality support we need to continue to provide it from locations in time zones on both sides of the Atlantic.

"We chose Johannesburg as it has an excellent supply of talented people, is well placed in terms of time zones and offers good opportunities for cost savings when compared to London and a number of our other existing office locations."

Hogan Lovells chief operating officer Nick Cray added: "We will initially start with a small number of roles which we will then increase over a period of time as our experience develops. In almost all cases, roles will be transferred to Johannesburg only as and when people leave the firm.

When a vacancy arises in London and in the future in other offices in Europe and Asia, we will evaluate whether that role could be done in South Africa instead."

Cray will be responsible for heading up the new centre from London, while Routledge CEO May-Elaine Thomson will be overseeing it locally.

Hogan Lovells currently operates a 'Mexican wave' outsourcing model through which higher grade legal work and more routine work is outsourced to a panel of regional law firms.

It also outsources legal secretarial work to South African-based LPO Exigent and Integreon.