DLA Piper has expanded into Chile via a cooperation agreement with local law firm Bahamondez Alvarez & Zegers (BAZ).

The Santiago-based firm, which will now operate under the name BAZ/DLA Piper, has 25 lawyers, including five partners, with a particular focus on natural resources and energy work.

The firm's areas of practice include corporate, M&A, banking, antitrust, capital markets, employment, litigation, tax, real estate, oil and gas, immigration, corporate governance, private equity and venture capital.

The firms will continue under their current ownership but with private obligations to one another, said Roger Meltzer, DLA Piper's co-chairman for global and the Americas. BAZ will be "brand integrated" into DLA Piper as part of the global firm's goal of becoming the dominant law firm in Latin America. Cross-border law firm mergers have been on the rise in the region, as national firms work to retain clients as they expand globally.

DLA Piper has identified key markets where it needed to have a presence in order to make its offerings substantial – Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Chile.

"Chile was a market that was clearly strategically important, not just for the domestic market but for its ability to underpin our more global regional strategy," said Juan Picon, DLA Piper's Madrid-based global co-chairman and senior partner of the firm's international LLP.

The strategy underpinning the expansion: to be one of the few firms that can offer pan-Latin American services with strong connections to the Spanish-speaking communities across the US. Emerging money centres are key to the strategy, Meltzer said.

"The size of our relationships in any one of these economies is very measured based on the risk, including the political risk," Meltzer said. "We had a relationship in Venezuela that we have now closed because the political and commercial risk became something that wasn't tolerable."

Picon said the firm recently pitched for a large financial institution that has a lot of work in many markets and was asking for almost complete coverage of the region.

BAZ and DLA have worked together on projects in the financial sector and the technology space, and together have pitched their services to clients, Picon said.

The two firms have also been representing clients in the energy and M&A sectors, according to Michael Silva, a DLA Piper partner in Miami. In addition, there has been an increased demand for tax advice since Chile instituted major tax reforms that affect corporations and large family businesses, he said.

During the past year to 18 months, DLA Piper has been scrutinising firms it has worked with in the region, including BAZ, for a possible long-term relationship. The firm's management said BAZ had been carefully selected. The expansion is geared toward building a greater global platform for clients that are increasingly looking at investing throughout Latin America, rather than within a single country.

DLA Piper has had an ongoing cooperation agreement with Campos Mello in Brazil, and in recent years with Martinez Beltran in Colombia and Gallastegui & Lozano in Mexico City. Earlier this year, the firm opened a DLA Piper office in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The firm is now considering an office or relationship with a firm in Peru. It may look into having an office in Argentina as well.

"We're not in Chile or in any of these markets as a quick in and out. We're taking this as a major strategic move for the global firm," Picon said. "This is a market that combined has 626 million people – it's bigger than Europe. We are committed to become the leading firm in Latin America and we will be invested not only in Chile and the other places, but going beyond that in making our offering pretty unique."