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Rio Tinto Signs Legal Services Outsourcing Agreement With CPA Global

Posted on: Thursday, 18 June 2009, 05:18 CDT

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia, June 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Rio Tinto today announced that it has entered into a legal services outsourcing agreement with CPA Global that is projected to save Rio Tinto up to 20% annually in legal costs.

Under the agreement, CPA Global, one of the world's leading providers of outsourced legal support services, are providing a team of lawyers in India to support Rio Tinto's in-house legal function on a global basis.

Initially, the work undertaken by CPA Global includes contract review (http://www.cpaglobal.com/legal_process_outsourcing/contract_management) and drafting, legal research (http://www.cpaglobal.com/legal_process_outsourcing/legal_research), and document review. However, it is anticipated that the scope of work will expand to cover other routine legal services work traditionally handled in-house by Rio Tinto or shared amongst the company's panel of law firms.

Rio Tinto's managing attorney, Leah Cooper, said: "We took a long hard look at our internal costs and the amount we were spending with outside counsel and saw an opportunity to make significant changes to the way we deliver legal services to the group. We have developed a ground-breaking legal model with CPA Global that will generate tremendous savings and serve the business without compromising quality.

"By shifting work to CPA Global our internal team will be freed up to get involved in some of the more complex and challenging legal matters, which in the past might have been sent to outside counsel at significant cost.

"As more of our standard legal work is filtered though to CPA Global, we will have more time to lift our heads up from the day-to-day reactive delivery of legal services and focus on being more proactive. We will have more time to spend with the business, develop stronger relationships and understand what we can do to prevent legal issues developing in the first place with a stronger focus on prevention rather than cure."

Chris Veator, CPA Global's Executive Vice President, Legal Support Services (http://www.cpaglobal.com/legal_process_outsourcing), said: "We are delighted to have been appointed as Rio Tinto's legal services outsourcing partner. Rio Tinto have really done their homework on this and recognized that there is a better, more cost efficient way of structuring your legal services work, without sacrificing quality or security."

Bhaskar Bagchi, CPA Global's Country Head - India, added: "CPA Global's India team will serve as an extension of Rio Tinto's internal legal department. They are handpicked, well trained legal professionals who will work on a whole range of Rio Tinto legal matters from across the globe."

Commenting on the choice of CPA Global, Rio Tinto's Leah Cooper said: "CPA Global provided us with fresh thinking about how to unlock real savings on our legal costs without altering the level of service we offered our internal clients. What we particularly liked about CPA Global was that they are legal outsourcing specialists, not generalists, with a global size and scale."

About CPA Global

With clients in over 100 countries, CPA Global is one of the world's leading providers of legal process outsourcing (LPO) services. Now celebrating its 40th year of operations, CPA Global provides lifecycle management services for intellectual property (http://www.cpaglobal.com) such as patent (http://www.cpaglobal.com/patents), design and trademark searching, watching, renewals, and portfolio strategy. CPA Global is also a leader in the growing market for outsourced document review ( http://www.cpaglobal.com/legal_process_outsourcing/document_review), contract management and litigation support services, helping law firms and corporations to realize value by managing risk, cost and capacity. Founded in Jersey, Channel Islands in 1969, CPA Global today employs more than 1,200 people in 16 offices in eight countries. For further information, please visit: http://www.cpaglobal.com or contact our media relations team:

About Rio Tinto

Rio Tinto is a leading international mining group headquartered in the UK, combining Rio Tinto plc, a London and NYSE listed company, and Rio Tinto Limited, which is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange.

Rio Tinto's business is finding, mining, and processing mineral resources. Major products are aluminium, copper, diamonds, energy (coal and uranium), gold, industrial minerals (borax, titanium dioxide, salt, talc) and iron ore. Activities span the world but are strongly represented in Australia and North America with significant businesses in South America, Asia, Europe and southern Africa.

SOURCE CPA Global

Source: PR Newswire

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