Companies doing business around the world often have lawyers located in various international locations. Some of those lawyers, fully competent and handling significant legal work, receive pay at local levels – often levels far below those of equivalent lawyers in the U.S. or U.K. Such a compensation differential allows a law department to arbitrage work internally to those lower cost lawyers.
I know a pharmaceutical company that kept a contingent of patent lawyers in Sweden, in part because they cost a fraction of what their U.S. patent counterparts were paid. To pull off this cost-of-living legerdemain, the law department must focus on total costs, not on total headcount.