We reported last week that full merger talks between Australian law firm DLA Phillips Fox and its international affiliate DLA Piper had been thwarted. That is, the incoming Phillips Fox Chief Executive Partner Tony Holland hadn’t yet had an opportunity to get across “the financials” of the merger.
Tony’s task of getting across these mysterious “financials”, apparently just got a little easier. If our anonymous DLAPF spy is to be believed, he ought to consign the figures coming from his Adelaide office to the bin:
DLAPF/DLA Piper merger? DLAPF Adelaide is now financially independent of the wider firm. It happened a couple of months ago, very quietly.
Very quietly indeed! We certainly haven’t read anything in the press. This news is at odds with the firm’s Australian website which proudly boasts of its presence in the city of churches. On the “About Us” page of its website, DLAPH proclaims:
DLA Phillips Fox is one of the largest legal firms in Australasia with offices in Adelaide, Auckland, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney and Wellington.
But if the Adelaide office and the wider firm are financially independent, and indeed the firm is on the record as having financial independence from the DLA Piper network (instead having an “exclusive reliance” only – for referrals), in what sense are DLA Phillips Fox offices interconnected?
Like the naming rights to a stadium, can an office just pay a fee and get a “DLA Phillips Fox” moniker?
Meanwhile, the caustic barbs being leveled at the firm are stacking up on the website of our friends The Lawyer:
This really raises serious qustions about the management decisions of DLA – How could they let the so called “Aussie Mafia situation” continue unchecked for so long? They should have nipped the sitution in the bud long ago by firing these partners rather than “seconding’ back to Oz. I’d have also thought the Phillips Fox is taking a big risk in terms of their reputation own by employing these “damaged goods” – Word travels fast.
I think this situation has done DLA ME irreparable damage and, as previously commented, who in their right mind would instruct DLA ME again!!
And this:
The fact remains, that the comments on here are true that a minority of very poor quality Australians ruined what had become a very good platform for DLA, and they didn’t just stop at shipping in second rate lawyers. DLA [Dubai] is now a third rate provisional Aussie practice, which unfortunately is where it has now slid from what promised to become an excellent practice, much to the annoyance of the other firms here, hence why everyone is delighting in the DLA debacle.
And most recently:
A practice built on cronyism can never succeed.
Ouch! A far cry from the claims on the DLAPH website:
we enjoy our work and our clients like working with us. We are known for our down-to-earth, practical and open approach to building relationships with our clients and with each other. We focus on teamwork – across our network of eight offices in Australia and New Zealand and globally, as part of our exclusive alliance with DLA Piper, one of the largest legal services organisations in the world.
Teamwork, or a fractured financial (t)rot back to Australia?
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