White & Case's London office saves $16m in cost-cutting programme

White & Case's London office has saved more than $16m (£9.6m) since introducing a cost-cutting programme almost 18 months ago.

The office has saved some $10m (£6.05m) since January alone through the cost-saving regime which has included stepping up use of outsourcing and reviewing contracts with all external suppliers. The changes were made as part of a firmwide effort to reduce non-essential costs.

The cost savings since January include some $3.9m (£2.3m) shaved off operational spending. This includes savings of $2m (£1.2m) from renegotiating contracts with external suppliers, with further savings made through transferring its IT, administration and facilities helpdesks to the firm's outpost in Manila.

Professional costs including reducing recruitment fees, spending on seminars, libraries and training yielded a further $4.6m (£2.7m) saving in the 10 months ending 31 October. Spend on training alone has been cut by more than $1m (£605,000) by conducting more training in-house.

Occupancy costs have been cut by $1.6m (£965,000) since January by reducing spend on rent, maintenance, repairs and leasehold improvements. Other savings include around $250,000 (£151,000) through restricting taxi usage.

The $10m (£6.05m) figure realised in the 10 months up to 31 October does not include any savings made from the firm's redundancy consultation that concluded in June. That saw 95 fee earners and support staff laid off, with around 55% of the cuts affecting fee earners.

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