Bird & Bird has strengthened its German practice with the hire of senior Linklaters IT partner Joerg-Alexander Paul, as the City law firm continues to aggressively grow its European practice.

Paul, who has been a partner with magic circle law firm Linklaters since 2000, will join Bird & Bird in the coming weeks.

He will become the third partner in the firm's German IT group, which is headed up by Munich partner Alexander Duisberg, and will be re-united with former colleague Fabian Niemann.

The hire is the second time in as many months that Bird & Bird has recruited a partner from Linklaters to strengthen its continental practice. In September the firm announced it was hiring Link-laters' Brussels intellectual property (IP) head, Jean-Christophe Troussel.

Bird & Bird now has more than 100 lawyers in Germany based in offices in Duesseldorf, Frankfurt and Munich.

Bird & Bird co-head of corporate Alexander Schroeder-Frerkes said: "We have a lot of IT clients in the telecoms sector and a number of our other core sectors but Joerg brings in a lot of banking and financial institutions' IT and outsourcing work."

Partners at rival firms said Linklaters had been focusing its European offices on corporate and finance during recent years.

One IT partner at a rival firm said: "Linklaters is not the only firm that is cutting back its non-transactional departments. The other magic circle firms are all doing it too."