DLA Piper hopes to call the tune

Big plans, bold statements, and brave assumptions – but will DLA’s confidence be matched by results in Dublin?

DLA Piper’s Dublin ambitions were evident from its relocation to Molesworth Street two years ago – at 30,000 sq ft, there was plenty of room to accommodate its growing local headcount. Last November, that move was followed by a statement of intent: having ‘delivered on its initial recruitment ambition of building a local team of 100 lawyers and business professionals’, DLA planned to ‘double its existing workforce’ in Dublin targeting key sectors: financial services, life sciences and technology.

So how will the ‘fastest-growing legal brand in Ireland’, as proclaimed on the firm’s website, deliver on those growth plans? “We’ve been in Dublin for nearly five years,” says David Carthy, DLA’s local managing partner. “We now have 17 partners, about 110 people: 75 lawyers and 35 business services staff. We probably have sufficient momentum to get to 200.” The question is: how do you get there? Do you wake up in the morning and realise you’re the same as everybody else because you’ve not pursued a different strategy, or alternatively that you’ve driven higher profit margins from a strategy that differentiates?”