Ex-Linklaters chief Angel to join DLA Piper as senior partner
Former Linklaters managing partner Tony Angel is set to join DLA Piper as senior partner in one of the most sensational lateral hires in the legal market.
Tony Angel
Angel, who is thought to have been offered a remuneration package worth £2m a year, will begin at DLA Piper on Monday 7 November following a two-week voting period.
Current senior partner Janet Legrand will move sideways, retaining her position on the board.
The move will consolidate joint CEO Sir Nigel Knowles’ ongoing project to transform the firm he has led since 1996. It is understood that the firm is aiming to double in size in three years. In the last financial year DLA Piper’s international LLP, which excludes its US operations, recorded a turnover of £604.9m.
Senior management partners rarely move firms after leaving from the one they have led; the last high-profile management move was Tony Williams, who had been managing partner of Clifford Chance before moving to run the now-defunct Andersen Legal in 2000 (10 January 2000).
Earlier this year Angel, who retired from Linklaters in 2007, returned to the law with a role as a non-executive director at SJ Berwin (11 March 2011). It is understood that he has resigned from that position.
Earlier this year DLA Piper rejigged its senior management, forming an executive team comprising Knowles, chief financial officer Paul Edwards and four managing directors - Andrew Darwin, David Bradley, Alastair Da Costa and Ulrich Jungst - who report to Knowles.
Last week the firm unveiled plans to move to an all-equity partnership model in the international side of its business (20 October 2011).
DLA Piper declined to comment.
Readers' comments (10)
Anonymous | 26-Oct-2011 5:20 pm
DLA's partners must be quaking in their boots. Angel restructured Linklaters long before the recession hit so imagine how his axe will swing in the current economic environment.
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Anonymous | 26-Oct-2011 6:16 pm
Sideways? Oh dear. Take that! DLA have gone all Robbie Williams on Janet.
I sit and wait.
Does an Angel contemplate my fate?
And do they know
the places where we go
when we´re grey and old?
Cos I´ve been told
That salvation lets their wings unfold.
So when I’m lying in my bed
thoughts running through my head
and I feel that love is dead
They’re loving Angel instead
(All together now)
And through it aaaaaaaaaaaall
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Anonymous | 26-Oct-2011 6:25 pm
So why did they vote to bring him on then? A non fee earning 2 million pound partner is hardly something to take on without considering the consequences, which has to be less money for everyone else, and they already have knowles, Darwin, da costa etc not fee earning and pocketing similar sums. And DLA isnt a comparable business to Linklaters. It is mid market with a lean to commoditised business, something it cant shake off easily or without firing a very large percentage of its existing partners and replacing them with ones that cost more.......
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Anonymous | 27-Oct-2011 7:43 am
They are such different firms, with very different attitudes to legal risk. Also, Angel hasn't exactly been a rip-roaring success since Links decided they didn't need him anymore. He is known to still be very money-motivated - I foresee a high-profile pay off within 18 months or less.
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A Voice from Heaven | 27-Oct-2011 10:57 am
Top of Angel's action list will be:
- to merge DLA Piper's profit pools (just as Linklaters & Alliance became one profit pot after the mergers).
- to squeeze out dead wood at top (as Links did in Germany and elsewhere).
- to create a single profit system that will permit a few outliers but with a high barrier to entry, it will see the demise of large swathes of pseudo partners in US, UK and around the world.
- the end result will be a far more homogeneous, higher quality firm.
Angel's biggest problem will be engineering a new culture in the firm that eschews volume work and instead seeks to drive up into higher margin work. This will be tough, but essential if DLA is to come at the big boys with credibility.
Of course, it could all just be a costly failure with no real change in work or brand perception....we'll see.....
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Anonymous | 27-Oct-2011 1:10 pm
In my view, one of DLA’s biggest problems in the UK is the reputation it has as a result of the way it treated its associates during the downturn.
Why would top associates join or stay with such a firm?
And how can the firm clamber out of the lower mid market without them?
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Anon | 27-Oct-2011 1:19 pm
He's backing a winning a horse, DLA is on course to be the PwC of the legal world.
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Anonymous | 27-Oct-2011 3:10 pm
Yea a £2 mill package full of porkies. 2 mill my foot!
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Anonymous | 27-Oct-2011 3:33 pm
What better person to take the difficult decisions which most insiders would prefer to avoid, especially with the downturn in UK? Others will have to follow suit.
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Anonymous | 27-Oct-2011 6:04 pm
DLA's success has been built upon making dynamic management decisions and changing their business model to meet changes in the market.
I agree with the comment above that DLA's horrendous treatment of its associates will come back and haunt them. On a much smaller scale a local firm, Dickinson Dees, acted in a similarly brutal way towards their assistants during the recession and now has serious difficulties in retaining its best trainees or attracting promising junior staff. It'll be interesting to see if DLA is similarly blocked in the associate market.
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