HSBC, the UK banking giant, has set up a team of four lawyers at its global service centre in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, to service its UK volume legal work. Understood to be the first major UK financial institution to make such a move, the bank said that it may open up the facility to the bank’s legal functions in other jurisdictions The initiative is being led by HSBC’s corporate banking head of legal, Keith Ford, and follows the bank's "offshoring" of other back-office functions, such as human resources. A senior in-house lawyer was seconded to pilot the scheme in September and the bank is now training up the team in UK law. Mr Ford told Legal Week: “We send out the most straightforward and practical work; the queries are of a routine nature rather than any complex issues. The project has freed up other onshore lawyers to do more challenging legal work.” “We are currently training the lawyers in Kuala Lumpur and looking to make some further local hires shortly. Overall, however, we are undertaking the project at a considered pace, wanting to ensure that we succeed in managing one type of work offshore before migrating others,” added Mr Ford. Other UK legal teams to offshore a portion of their in-house work include BT, which last year supplemented its existing offshore legal function in New Delhi with new teams in Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires to support its US operations.