Leading Irish lawyers Eavan Saunders and Peter O’Brien to found the office

World’s largest law firm plans to grow in Dublin quickly

Dentons, the world’s largest law firm, today announced its expansion into the Irish market. Leading Irish lawyers Eavan Saunders and Peter O’Brien will found the office and Eavan will become Managing Partner. As part of its expansion plans, Dentons will be fully operational in Dublin from Q2 and intends to grow the office quickly.

Eavan was previously a senior partner at leading Irish law firm William Fry as well as at global law firm Ashurst, and she is one of Ireland’s most respected corporate lawyers. Peter, who will become Chair, is a senior finance and capital markets partner at Matheson who acts for a range of domestic and international financial institutions and has over twenty years’ experience advising on all aspects of banking and finance-related transactions. Eavan joins Dentons with immediate effect and Peter will be joining shortly.

Dentons’ Dublin office will initially focus on transactional work for clients particularly in the financial services, real estate, energy, infrastructure and technology sectors, areas where Dentons has market-leading expertise around the world.

“Dublin is a leading offshore funds centre, a global centre of aviation finance and nine out of ten of the world’s largest tech companies have their European headquarters in the city”, said Elliott Portnoy, Global CEO of Dentons. “Dentons’ strategy is to be in all of the places our clients do business, providing them with high quality lawyers who are also established leaders in their markets. We are delighted to have attracted a partner of Eavan’s calibre to lead our Dublin office. Ireland is a priority market for many of our clients. However, many of the strongest firms in Ireland rely on referrals from firms outside of London.  That is why we are opening our own office rather than combining with another firm at this time.”

“Our vision is to always be the law firm of the future,” said Dentons’ Global Chairman Joe Andrew. “We look forward to working with Eavan and Peter in bringing Dentons’ global capabilities and innovative approach to client service to the Irish legal market, while offering ambitious Irish lawyers some of the profession’s  best learning and development opportunities through our ground-breaking NextTalent programme.”

Dentons provides clients with access to more than 10,000 lawyers in 181 locations across 73 countries around the globe. In 2019 the firm won 270 awards – more than any other law firm.

“Dentons can offer Irish companies with international ambitions the scale, quality and in depth sector specialisation that no other law firm in Dublin can match”, said Eavan Saunders. “It is one of the leading global law firms in the UK; a top ten international law firm on the European continent; has offices in 33 US cities including nine of the ten largest markets in the US; is the largest law firm in China and offers the widest international footprint across the ASEAN region and Australasia; is the only Pan-Latin American law firm; and has ambitions to be the leading Pan African law firm. As Dentons we can now offer the Irish business community access to the largest pool of legal talent in the world.”

“Eavan and Peter have very impressive reputations in the Irish market, having advised blue-chip domestic and international clients on some of their most important corporate and finance transactions in recent years,” said Jeremy Cohen, CEO for Dentons’ UK and Middle East region. “Our aim is to build an elite team that can offer the highest quality advice combined with unrivalled international reach. Over the next few months we will be looking to hire further outstanding legal talent as we develop our plans to quickly reach full service capability. This is a really exciting opportunity for up and coming Irish lawyers with an international mind-set.”

Dentons is one of the world’s most innovative law firms. It has launched global legal tech accelerator and innovation consultancy Nextlaw Labs, award winning legal referral network Nextlaw Referral Network and global strategic business of law advisory Nextlaw In-House Solutions.