International law firm Dentons has entered the Zambian market after finalising its combination with local firm Eric Silwamba, Jalasi and Linyama Legal Practitioners.
The operation in Lusaka will trade as Dentons Eric Silwamba Jalasi & Linyama and practices in a range of areas including commercial, corporate, banking and finance law, dispute resolution, real estate, tax, mining, employment and intellectual property.
Dentons is the world’s largest law firm by headcount.
The firm last year announced five similar combinations in Morocco, Uganda, Angola and Mozambique.
In a statement, Dentons’ global chief executive, Elliott Portnoy, said the firm intended to be a leader on the continent, adding: “Clients want access to leading talent in the markets where they do business and we can now connect clients to opportunities in Zambia and around the globe.”
Global chairman Joe Andrew expanded on that demand, saying “our clients are confronted with constant, accelerated change”, praising the new team as “talented and enterprising”.
Africa chief executive, Noor Kapdi, explained that the acquisition was part of the firm’s strategy to spread throughout the region through “combination firms who have the proven ability to offer sophisticated, high-quality legal services and business solutions in their home markets”.
Eric Silwamba himself said: “As part of Dentons, we can now offer our clients access to leading global talent and innovative business solutions to deliver high-quality service in Zambia and around the world.”
He ate a lot of money in Chiluba’s time. I don’t think most of that money was clean money. Lets see if Dentons will help employ more people because our biggest problem now is unemployment, remember people were told by the PF before they were elected that there would be more jobs and more money in peoples pockets but there is absolutely none
Typical upnd trash. Nothing, but nothing positive ever comes from their mouths.
This is a plus for Jalasi, Silwamba and Linyama. Zambian firms, Govt and individuals have had difficult to litigate internationally, especially on high profile cases. Former BP employees are still struggling to enforce the Supreme Court judgement on their pensions that we hear found their way to Cayman Islands. The Task Force on corruption faced similar challenges whenever they required court orders abroad to access certain information. So this move is very well come and I hope there’ll be more. My only caution is that please maintain integrity and employee more young persons in your pool of lawyers. Don’t help high profile criminals to launder their loot
Is Law Association of Zambia happy with this development? It sounds like recolonisation to me where we are giving up every area of our economy to foreign owners even where we can do it ourselves like in professions. How can professionals be acquired by a foreign power especially one that is clearly on a path to dominate Africa and plant flags everywhere? When all professions become foreign owned that’s when a country is lost to foreign powers. This is not a good trend for all professions especially that its happening after our independence and following long time existence of UNZA law school and other institutions for training our professionals. I hope there are rules in Zambia that regulate this otherwise it’s a bad signal. Of all the 4 key professions Law and Medicine appeared…
…Law and Medicine appeared independent from foreign domination while the Accounts only regained their independence a few years ago. The Engineers are about to lose theirs if not lost already. God Bless Zambia
@ Chosen One, it is a strategic partnership, the law firm will operate as it used to, there are no shareholding in law firms and they are not registered at PACRA for you to state they are being bought or owned, only people with a licence to practice in Zambia can run law firms. In practice, this means that the law fim will be given international clients from Dentons.
Side Note, Linyama as a practitioner needs to be given more recognition, the man has read the law and is impressive in court.
Good for him. Hard work pays off.
Now all the judges in Zambia are praying, ‘Please lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil.’ Such a huge firm will have a lot of resources to swamp any other firm in Zambia. Can you imagine one lawyer going through 10,000 page bundles against a firm with 100 layers? With so much money, judges will be asking, ‘Eh, what is in it for me?’
Congratulations Eric. With HH coming in next year, the economic environment will improve and your business will thrive