DLA Piper has reached the limits of style

To be fair to DLA Piper, the global giant has said so many (sometimes contradictory) things about the nature of its global union and future intentions to tighten the union that you could argue - as the firm does - that its latest integration plans are no shift of position, let alone a U-turn.

After all, if you have no clear position, you can argue that you’ve never changed it. Of course, many would see the current proposals for bolstering integration between the two sides of the business (and three LLPs) to be short of the grand rhetoric heard at the time of the 2005 union between the UK’s DLA and us duo Piper Rudnick and Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich.

The proposals currently going out to partners essentially revolve around boosting its global pool for central investment, finessing its firm-wide sector groups and improving its international secondments.

That is as best as outside observers can tell because the firm is guarded to the point of paranoia about discussing its agenda or giving concrete details. But - inevitably - the more the firm is seen to be evasive regarding the union, the more attention it attracts.

Indeed, while the legacy DLA always had a keen eye for using style to sell its undoubted substance, the feeling increasingly is that the promotion of the DLA Piper concept is starting to detract from the reality of the firm.

So the firm chooses to now present its financial results globally, though it still largely exists as two separate profit centres, partnerships and management teams. In 2008, this allowed the firm to trumpet that its turnover had risen by 18.7% to hit the globally-imposing figure of $2.1bn (£1.07bn). However, that obscures the fact that the US side of the business contributed $1.134m (£578m) of that total. Those that wishes to know more about the finances of the UK business can read this report on its latest LLP filing.

None of which changes the fact that there was a clear logic to the tie-up, which has dramatically boosted the global profile of the legacy businesses and must generally be seen to have delivered.

Having so far largely avoided the thorny issues of full financial integration – top-billers in the US still earn far more than UK equivalents despite the legacy DLA partnership’s meritocratic pay model – has allowed the pairing to dodge many of the problems that plagued Clifford Chance following its US merger. And everyone knows that mergers of equals are the hardest to pull off, especially when the equals are in foreign countries, so perhaps the firm has made an astute call. But why not be more straightforward about that compromise?

Perhaps it is because there are limits to how far you can get by on style and profile without making the hard choices. While only a fool would quickly write off DLA Piper, the question now is how much further the firm can go in its current form.

alex.novarese@legalweek.com