London, June 18 : Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto has become the first foreign business group to hire a team of Indian lawyers to try to reduce its annual 60 million pound legal bill by 20 per cent.

According to The Times, Rio has recruited 12 lawyers in Delhi through CPA Global, a legal outsourcing group, to work for it on tasks such as reviewing documents and drafting contracts.

The unit is expected to double in size within a year and will save the company 20 per cent of its annual legal budget, believed to be about 100 million dollars.

Rio has 100 lawyers worldwide and uses law firms such as Linklaters and Baker and McKenzie for external advice.

It began a shake-up of its legal department as part of cost-cutting that that will lead to the loss of 15,000 jobs.

Rio Tinto estimates that its Indian team, which has operated since May 1, will be seven times cheaper than comparable lawyers in London. It said that it had already saved more than a million dollars.

Other big companies, which can spend from 10 million to 100 million pounds a year on legal costs, are thought to be considering similar arrangements.

While some companies have outsourced standard legal work to India, Rio Tinto is believed to be the first big company to recruit a team of fully qualified lawyers to perform substantive legal work that otherwise would have been done by lawyers in London. (ANI)