Deloitte Legal has entered a strategic alliance with top Italian employment boutique LabLaw.

The deal will see LabLaw co-founder and chairman Luca Failla join Deloitte Legal’s employment and benefits practice, which has three partners and 25 professionals, on 1 October.

That will leave fellow co-founder and managing partner Francesco Rotondi at the helm of LabLaw, which has 50 lawyers, and will focus on litigation.

The two sides said the deal would help consolidate LabLaw’s market-leading position – it is a Legal 500 tier one firm – while helping Deloitte Legal to grow its international employment practice.

Carlo Gagliardi, managing partner of Deloitte Legal DCM (Deloitte Central Mediterranean), said: “Our clients are facing exceptional volumes of activities with employment law implications and the arrival of Luca Failla and the alliance with LabLaw will allow us to complete the range of our offer to better support them...” 

Rotondi added: “LabLaw has been providing litigation consulting and services in the areas of labor, union and social security law for over 10 years and we are now more than ready to broaden the horizons of services designed for our clients.”

LabLaw has a large network of offices in Italy, covering: Milan, Rome, Naples, Padua, Bari, Genoa and Pescara. 

The move by Deloitte Legal follows expansion in Germany in July when it hired a three-partner team from DWF while in June Big Four rival KPMG Legal launched in Luxembourg with the hire of Charles Russell Speechlys’ former office head, David Louis, and a team of three other lawyers.

Meanwhile, Deloitte Legal has been expanding its legal consulting services offering after making three senior hires from Elevate Services in London this month and opening a Legal Business Services arm in the US in July.