Travers Smith litigation partner Toby Robinson is set to take up a secondment at the firm's client RBS as interim head of litigation, regulatory and investigations.

Robinson will join RBS for a six-month period from February this year while the current postholder is on leave.

His secondment is an unusual move for Travers, which rarely sends partners in-house. In recent years the only partner to have been seconded from the firm to an in-house role has been corporate lawyer Anthony Foster, who joined the Bank of England for six months in 2009.

Robinson has been a partner at Travers since 2008, when he joined from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer where he was an associate in the financial institutions disputes group.

Travers finance partner Paul Lyons said: "The ongoing global financial crisis has seen a substantial increase in the incidence of regulatory investigations. In our experience very few financial institutions have been untouched by this development.

"The strength of our regulatory investigations group has led to a significant increase in the number of instructions in this area received from a variety of clients. It is very rare for us to second partners; we are, however, delighted that Toby has been invited to take on this important role within RBS."

The news comes after the firm has lined up on a string of high-profile deals in recent months, including advising Blacks Leisure on its administration, with the majority of Blacks' assets sold to JD Sports in a deal reportedly worth £20m.

The firm also took a lead role on Doughty Hanson's £250m acquisition of oil and gas logistics company Asco at the close of last year, advising the selling shareholders including Phoenix Equity Partners, Indigo Capital and Asco's senior management team.