DLA Piper Forced To Close Struggling Office Due To Defections

Which office will be closing, and will there be any layoffs?

DLA Piper, one of the largest and most profitable law firms in the world, will soon have one fewer office in its geographically dispersed stable of attorneys. This probably wasn’t the holiday news that lawyers at the firm were expecting, but given that the office subject to closure is located in Tampa, Florida, this may very well be considered a Christmas miracle.

Why in the world would DLA Piper close one of its offices? It seems to be due to lateral defections. Julie Kay of the Daily Business Review has more information:

Former DLA Piper partners say the firm’s Tampa office has struggled since a handful of lawyers defected to open Quarles & Brady’s Tampa office in 2010. Seven lawyers specializing in franchise operations wound up leaving DLA Piper to join the Milwaukee-based Quarles & Brady, said David Beyer, managing partner of that firm’s Tampa office and one of the defectors.

Beyer said he heard one of DLA’s Tampa lawyers will be moving to the firm’s Seattle office and another to its Washington office.

A law firm consultant who asked not to be identified said he wasn’t surprised by the closing. The Tampa Bay area is a lower-rate, second-tier market and few, if any, AmLaw 25 firms have offices there, he said.

There are 10 attorneys and a handful of legal professionals who work in the firm’s Tampa office. What will happen to them? Bienvenido a Miami! According to spokesman Josh Epstein, in 2016, DLA Piper will “consolidate lawyers and staff from our Tampa office into the firm’s Miami office and Tampa-based administrative service center.”

While there likely won’t be any layoffs, these lawyers will be expected to pick up their lives and make quite the move to the firm’s Miami office. We wouldn’t be surprised if DLA Piper failed to realize that the Tampa and Miami offices are four hours apart — the firm doesn’t even know what countries some of its offices are located in. Then again, we doubt that anyone at DLA will self-select out of their office reassignment — the only thing that’s worth mentioning in Tampa are its strippers, not its lawyers.

We sincerely hope that these DLA Piper lawyers will enjoy their new home in Miami in 2016. All things considered, it’s already an improvement over Tampa!

DLA Piper Closing Tampa Office [Daily Business Review]

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