Regional law firms in a skills-sharing partnership

It will no longer be difficult for investors and global organisations to access international legal services after DLA Piper, a global law firm with presence all across the world, strengthened its presence in the region.

Friday, August 01, 2014
Church (left) chats with Moses Gatama Kiiza of Equity Juris Chambers during the retreat at the Serena Kigali Hotel. The global law firm has expanded its operations in East Africa. (Timothy Kisambira)

It will no longer be difficult for investors and global organisations to access international legal services after DLA Piper, a global law firm with presence all across the world, strengthened its presence in the region.

According to David Church, the DLA Piper international development partner, the firm has expanded partnerships with more regional lawyers "to serve an increasing demand for quality legal services across the East African region”.

"The formation of DLA East Africa is a proactive response to the increasing demand from clients, especially investors, for international-related legal services that cannot be provided by local law firms.

"We happy to help fill this gap,” Church pointed out on the sidelines of the group’s annual retreat in Kigali last week.

"The alliance serves to providing regional and international businesses with coordinated legal services across East Africa,” Church said.

In addition to working together on many jurisdictional transactions, the DLA Piper partnership share best practices, training, knowledge and support related to speciality practice areas across the countries.

DLA East Africa brings together six of the region’s leading law firms from Six East African member firms from Kenya, Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan and Rwanda. Equity Juris Chambers is the group’s partner in Rwanda

Last week’s retreat focused innovations in structuring oil and gas projects and power generation projects.

The company presently works with over 4,200 lawyers spread across 70 offices in 30 countries.