Eavan Saunders, previously a senior partner at William Fry as well as global law firm Ashurst, will be managing partner of the Dublin office, while Peter O’Brien, currently a senior finance and capital markets partner at Matheson, will become chair.

The Dublin office will be “fully operational” from the second quarter of 2020 and will initially focus on transactional work for clients, particularly in the financial services, real estate, energy, infrastructure and technology sectors.

Global CEO Elliott Portnoy said: “Dublin is a leading offshore funds centre, a global centre of aviation finance and nine out of ten of the world’s largest tech companies have their European headquarters in the city.

“Dentons’ strategy is to be in all of the places our clients do business, providing them with high quality lawyers who are also established leaders in their markets. We are delighted to have attracted a partner of Eavan’s calibre to lead our Dublin office.

“Ireland is a priority market for many of our clients. However, many of the strongest firms in Ireland rely on referrals from firms outside of London. That is why we are opening our own office rather than combining with another firm at this time.”

Global chairman Joe Andrew added: “We look forward to working with Eavan and Peter in bringing Dentons’ global capabilities and innovative approach to client service to the Irish legal market, while offering ambitious Irish lawyers some of the profession’s best learning and development opportunities through our ground-breaking NextTalent programme.”

Ms Saunders said Dentons “can offer Irish companies with international ambitions the scale, quality and in depth sector specialisation that no other law firm in Dublin can match”.