The move represents a U-turn for DLA Piper, which had publicly stated its intention to financially integrate its
Partners received a list of proposals at the beginning of June, in line with the management board’s previous statement that it would go to the partnership three years after the merger with proposals.
However, measures focused on financial integration were not included in the proposals.
Instead, the plan looks at softer issues such as reducing the number of chief executives from three to two. This would see
the
Other proposals include increasing the amount of money in the firm’s global pool of funds used for joint investments by 2.5%, with the money coming from the revenues of the US and international limited liability partnerships (LLPs), as well as refining its sector groups globally. The firm will also be looking to increase lawyer secondments between offices and move more US lawyers over to Europe, the Middle East and
In addition, the firm is planning to change its structure by moving away from its three LLPs worldwide (global, international and US) by dissolving its global LLP in preference of a Swiss verein structure like the one used by Baker & McKenzie. This would help manage the firm’s risk and tax.
Partners are currently voting on the proposals, with a final decision likely to be made at the global partnership conference at the end of June.
The U-turn will be viewed with interest by rivals as Knowles told Legal Week last September that he would be ‘very disappointed’ if the firm was not financially integrated by 2009, although he stopped short of revealing the extent of the integration that he envisaged.
Rivals and ex-partners have speculated that stumbling blocks could include the fact that integration would open the firm as a whole up to US regulations, as well as the marked differences in profits between the offices.
It is not clear when financial integration will be revisited by the firm.
A managing partner at a rival firm said: “It is surprising because if you look back over the last few years Knowles has been going on about achieving financial integration. As far as U-turns go this seems quite a big one. ”
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