The three partners will be accompanied by their team of nine corporate lawyers and five support staff, growing DLA Piper's Perth office to a 115 person strong team and making it one of the largest in the market for a global firm. Hardy Bowen has strong capabilities in mining industry work and made a name for itself working on major transactions with international clients. Founding partner Michael Bowen said the firm’s decision to join DLA Piper reflects the firm’s need to support international clients overseas: ‘We have found that a lot of those clients were really strong in overseas jurisdictions and we were constantly trying to juggle the task of being able to service their corporate activity in Australia while at the same time maintain some sort of relationship with them in the jurisdictions in which they operated,’ he said. ‘[DLA Piper] added the global strength we require when handling these overseas assets.’ Source: DLA Piper