A Berlin-based team of eight Dentons employment lawyers has joined leading German independent Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek. 

The team, which is led by Dentons’ former German co-head of employment law, Utz Andelewski, focuses on healthcare-related clients, including Deutsche Wohnen, acting on both contentious and non-contentious cases. It advises hospitals, care facilities and health insurers advising on collective and individual employment law instructions, employers’ liability claims and social security matters. 

Andelewski became a partner at Dentons in 2009, having trained and qualified at Heuking. He returns to the firm as an equity partner, working alongside partners Astrid Reich and Joachim Littig. Former Dentons counsel Christopher Wiencke becomes a salaried partner.

The team moving across to Heuking is completed by two associates and four junior lawyers.

Religious organisations are significantly involved in healthcare in Germany, with many hospitals run by the Protestant and Catholic churches; Andelewski advises clients in Protestant church-related employment and canon law matters, alongside his healthcare work.  

Wiencke joined Dentons in 2016 and has also worked for Latham & Watkins, CMS and in local government as an employment lawyer. He spent more than five years at Heuking’s employment law team in Berlin from 2009 to 2015. In addition to employment law, he also specialises in sports law, including football club contracts.

Karl-Josef Stöhr, head of Heuking’s Berlin office, said Andelewski’s arrival would expand the office’s advisory range, while employment partner Joachim Littig said his work for Protestant church clients would supplement the firm’s work for Catholic bodies, with which the firm had worked for many years.  

Andelewski said his team would be able to “leverage further synergies that were not previously used, such as in medical law and public procurement law”.

Last month, Heuking hired Clifford Chance arbitration lawyer Alexander Weiss as a salaried partner in Munich and in June it secured Rahel Skau from CMS to take up the post of head of legal technology and digitalisation.

Heuking joins fellow independent Noerr in securing a team from a leading global firm. Last month, Noerr secured a four-partner German corporate team from Latham & Watkins in Düsseldorf.

Dentons hired a quartet of energy lawyers from Baker McKenzie in Berlin in July.