DLA Piper forms consortium in Afghanistan

DLA Piper has formed a non-exclusive alliance with Afghanistan law firm Kakar Advocates. Kabul based Kakar Advocates was founded in 2013. It is a full-service firm that employs about a dozen U.S. and Afghan licensed attorneys with a client list comprised mostly of foreign embassies, non-government organisations and firms contracted with major foreign organisations like NATO and the US Department of Defense.

According to Kawun Kakar, founder and managing partner of Kakar Advocates, the consortium was operative for about eight months, but was officially announced in July and that the need for legal services, particularly international, is increasing in Afghanistan, and the firms hope that the new arrangement between will allow them to combine local and international legal expertise.

Kawun Kakar also added that Afghanistan's government has been increasingly taking on large, multinational projects, and has been strengthening the legal framework for the country's banking, mining and aviation sectors. A greater number of public-private partnerships will help attract foreign and local investment.

He further added that his firm works primarily with lawyers from DLA Piper's London office, although DLA Piper's U.S. lawyers have also been supportive of the alliance and each firm will bill according to the work it is doing.

The Kakar Advocates' website states that the DLA Piper alliance "enables both firms to jointly market for work and assist clients pursuing major projects in the mining, hospitality, telecommunications, aviation, banking and other economic sectors."

"Our relationship is not exclusive; it allows us to work with other firms as well and vice versa," Kakar said of DLA Piper.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Kawun Kakar has held advisory positions with the United Nations, the Afghan government and the Afghanistan Justice Sector Support Program for the U.S. Department of State.