Westwood and downtown-based boutique law firm Liner plans to merge with industry behemoth DLA Piper, the firms said Thursday.
The merger will add 60 attorneys to DLA’s Century City and downtown offices, giving the firm 110 local attorneys. That would put DLA at No. 13 on the list of the Business Journal’s largest law firms.
DLA, a leading global business law firm headquartered in Chicago, has more than 3,750 attorneys spread across offices in more than 40 countries throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The company had about $2.5 billion in revenue last year, according to the American Lawyer, making it the fifth-largest law firm in the world by that metric.
Liner focuses on litigation, real estate, business transactions and corporate restructuring. The firm was founded in 1996 and has an office in New York as well as its two outposts in L.A.
“I assumed that if we joined a firm like DLA there would be a loss of autonomy and a loss of the entrepreneurial spirit that we’ve enjoyed for the past 21 years,” Liner Managing Partner Stuart Liner said. “It turns out that their view of practicing law – non-withstanding size and market share – is pretty similar to ours.”
Deals & Dealmakers reporter Henry Meier can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @henry_meier.