DAVID CARTHY

‘We have become the fastest growing legal brand in Ireland’ Country Managing Partner DLA Piper Ireland

ACTIVITY We’re happy that our business has been very resilient and performed strongly at a global and at a local level through this period of disruption. Indeed, having significantly grown our Dublin practice in the past year and given that we are now at 70 people, we have become the fastestgrowing legal brand in Ireland. Our life sciences and technology practices, as well as our teams that specialise in data protection and employment have been very active. They have been working with clients requiring urgent advice on all aspects of Covid-19 responses, from employee testing, establishing lab facilities and related vaccination regimes.

LITIGATION In Ireland, the risk landscape is likely to become increasingly complex. Covid-19 in itself is likely to bring financial distress and all that entails – fraud, insolvencies, distressed claims for nonperformance, delay, and enforcement of rights generally, with a proliferation or potential tidal wave of claims on the horizon.

On top of Covid-19, we also have to consider the landscape in the context of Brexit, and we can expect greater regulatory activity and intervention generally in this regard. Competition regulators in particular are already becoming more active, with a focus on the tech sector, but there is also a heightened focus across all sectors on data usage and indeed data breach.

Where you have regulatory intervention, you have increased consumer awareness and therefore we are likely to see more follow-on claims, particularly in areas such as health, data, product liability, hospitality, travel and tourism, financial services, energy and telecommunications. With the introduction of the collective redress directive in Europe, we are likely to see a significant reform of the Irish litigation landscape with the introduction of class actions.

Finally, one of the most significant regulatory and compliance challenges will be the increasing range of sustainability and ESG regulations, and the likely increase in regulatory activity and claims in this area.

OUTLOOK As we are globally integrated and our international sector teams act as one, we also leverage the expertise in our offices around the world. Our life sciences team is one of the largest in the world, for example. Real estate, financial services, technology, consumer goods, food and retail, and insurance are areas where we are particularly strong.