With how many offices is DLA Piper represented in Central and Eastern Europe?
DLA Piper is currently represented with nine offices in Central and Eastern Europe (Bratislava, Bucharest, Budapest, Prague, Sarajevo, Sofia, Warsaw, Vienna and Zagreb). Furthermore, DLA Piper has four offices in the CIS region (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev and Tiflis). Our CEE/CIS team is certainly one of the largest in the field, if not the largest in the region.
Are those independent law offices, or subsidiaries of the Vienna office?
All DLA Piper offices are fully integrated parts of our international legal advisory organization DLA Piper; the individual offices are usually legally independent units, especially because of local professional legal regulations. This legal independence however is a merely administrative factor; consulting services and management are happening seamlessly and across the countries. When it comes to the CEE region, we follow a “One Market Approach”, meaning we always consider CEE as a region and an entity.
How is the representation of international companies organized in this network? Are they represented by the Vienna office, centrally for all of Eastern Europe, or are these companies represented locally by the offices in the individual countries?
This is always arranged depending on the desires and needs of the client. International clients always have at least one central contact person per region that coordinates all consulting services for the client. Many of our clients, especially from Austria, are also active all over the CEE region, just like we are, and they appreciate having a central contact person in Vienna who coordinates the consulting services for the entire region. In addition, our clients of course have the option of working directly with our local lawyers, if they wish to do so. |
