It has been a bumpy few months for DLA Piper. Just as the dust was settling following McDermott Will & Emery (MWE)’s 20-partner blitz on its US offices, the Chicago-based firm hired another three partners from DLA in London.
What a way to take some of the gloss off a turnaround in global turnover to back above $2.5bn, coupled with double-digit percentage growth in net profit, also announced in April.
MWE revealed just before Easter that a four-partner real estate finance team, led by DLA’s New York-based global co-chair of finance, Jeffrey Steiner, was joining. Steiner took the mantle of global real estate finance chief at MWE at the same time.
Steiner was the third DLA practice group leader to join MWE in a short time, after Michael Poulos, DLA’s co-managing partner for the Americas, and Michael Sheehan, its Chicago-based global co-chair of employment, both made the switch in March.
Overall, around 50 lawyers and 20 partners have recently moved from DLA to MWE in the US. MWE touted the moves as being expected to contribute as much as $100m in revenue, though DLA strongly rejects such projections.
By the end of April, however, MWE darkened DLA’s door again, but this time in the City – hiring three real estate partners in Laurence Rogers, Neville Wright and Tom Calnan.
Rogers specialises in real estate finance, and was previously DLA’s UK head of real estate after joining from legacy Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) in 2014. Rogers became co-head of the group when King Wood & Mallesons (KWM) partner William Naunton joined DLA in early 2017 as part of a 23-lawyer team across London, Frankfurt and Munich.
Wright, also a legacy BLP partner who joined in 2014, specialises in corporate tax for the finance and real estate sectors, while Calnan focuses on commercial real estate. Calnan had been at DLA little more than a year after joining from KWM.
MWE had 56 fee-earners and 24 partners in London before the DLA trio joined, and grew its London headcount by a quarter between 2012 and 2017.
A substantial run of losses, but one DLA City partner did not even know about the London trio’s departure a few days after the news broke. They were unconcerned about the US moves as well, describing the market there as ‘particularly fluid’: ‘A lot of these moves get balanced out by who comes in.’
In February, for instance, a trio of tax partners who joined Reed Smith in Europe as part of a 17-partner move from collapsed legacy SJ Berwin joined DLA after little more than a year at Reed Smith.
Unfortunately for DLA, the noise surrounding the partner losses stole the spotlight at the time DLA was announcing a significant turnaround in global turnover at the beginning of April, as well as the promotion of 62 lawyers to its partnership.
Global revenue rose to $2.63bn in 2017, up 7% on last year when turnover dipped below $2.5bn because of exchange rate fluctuations across its international business, which is divided between an international LLP and a US LLP.
Total lawyer numbers fell slightly to 3,609 from 3,615, having dropped by 140 the year previous. Revenue per lawyer at the firm rose 7% to $729,824, while net profit was up 10% to $709m. Profit per equity partner (PEP) also rose to $1.76m from last year’s $1.66m – a 6% lift.
However, MWE’s repeated hires have followed on from a turbulent end to 2017 for DLA, which saw much-admired senior partner and global co-chair Juan Picón depart for Latham & Watkins in Spain. His exit sparked DLA’s first contested senior partner race in a decade, which ultimately led to DLA veteran Andrew Darwin being named his successor in February.
Darwin, who has been at DLA his entire career since joining in 1981, was seen as the frontrunner throughout the election process and was considered a steady hand to take the role following a period of relative instability.
A DLA partner said Picón was the only recent departure they were sorry to see leave the firm: ‘I’m rather sanguine about it all.’
Perhaps, but such movement creates ripples.