Thomson Reuters is hoping that 130 of its employees in Eagan and Rochester, New York, will voluntarily accept buyouts as the company attempts to move some of its content production into India and the Philippines, company spokesman John Shaughnessy confirmed Wednesday.

The company is not disclosing details of the voluntary separation program.

Thomson Reuters is a New York-based business information company, and its legal division has significant operations in Eagan. It's hoping to shed 130 positions from its legal editorial operations department-which produces content for the company's Westlaw legal research service-and it is targeting publishing specialists and quality assurance employees.

Shaughnessy said that the publishing specialists support the production of content by doing keying, linking, coding, and loading data, while quality assurance employees are responsible for testing products.

The company does not yet know how many of the 130 positions will come from Minnesota, because it depends which employees voluntarily opt in to the program between now and the end of 2011.

“Our goal is to align staff and resources so we can support our global legal organization as effectively and efficiently as possible and enable us to invest in the business to support additional growth,” Shaughnessy wrote in an e-mail. “Our aim is to minimize or eliminate involuntary job loss by focusing on attrition and a voluntary separation program.”

The voluntary separation program is part of an effort to move some of the company's content production into India and the Philippines.

“We have used staff and resources around the world to support content production for years,” Shaughnessy wrote in an e-mail. “This action is part of a project launched several years ago to migrate certain steps in the content production process to Thomson Reuters global content centers in Manila and Hyderabad.”

Thomson Reuters employs more than 50,000 people in more than 100 countries. Its legal division is one of Minnesota's largest employers. It employed 6,600 in the state as of June 1.