Cayman based law firm Maples and Calder came to Ireland in 2006 with an aggressive strategy that the country’s top-tier legal practices didn’t see coming. They were able to convince numerous market-leading partners and lawyers from A&L Goodbody, Matheson Ormsby Prentice and Arthur Cox to come and join them and this has helped the firm to grow when in this present climate most firms decided to batten down the hatches.

In an interview with the Irish Times, managing partner Andrew Doyle said, “When we came to Ireland, we had a plan to target and attract best-in-breed lawyers. Luckily we were able to do that.” The firm focused on recruiting people at partner level who were considered ‘go-to’ lawyers. “High-quality people do well in a boom but even better in a downturn because clients can’t afford not to go to them . . . It is critical to have those partners.”

When asked if his firm had encountered any hostility to being able to ‘woo’ these people from rival firms Doyle said he didn’t think so. “When partners leave law firms, obviously there’s a degree of disappointment, but I think people accept that nowadays it’s just a fact of business life,” he said.

Maples and Calder has offices in London, Dubai and Hong Kong. It established an operation in Ireland through a merger with Binchy’s, a specialist Irish law firm with 40 staff. Despite the swift and severe downturn that followed, the firm has grown steadily and now employs 175 persons.

Doyle says that being part of an international firm gives Maples a significant competitive advantage, as the Dublin office receives referrals from colleagues around the globe. “They send us clients when they want to effect transactions in Ireland and indeed where it may be possible to establish operations or [carry out] acquisitions in Ireland. When we came to Ireland we had no legacy issues. We were able to build the firm in exactly the way that we wanted to. We had a plan, and the plan was to build a full service corporate and finance law firm operation at the top end of the legal market.”

Already the firm is the number two legal service provider to the Irish funds market and is has earned over Two Million Pounds Sterling in fees from providing legal advice to the National Asset Management Agency (Nama). This has made it the fourth highest paid Nama adviser.