McDermott Will & Emery has hired Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) corporate finance partner Lisa O'Neill to its energy advisory group in London.

O'Neill focuses on upstream oil and gas matters, helped BLP secure a subsidiary role on the legal panel of Shell when it was reviewed in 2013. She was previously seconded to the energy company's London office.

At McDermott, O'Neill will advise on M&A, joint ventures, commercial contracts and general corporate work, and lists RWE Dea, an oil and gas subsidiary of German energy company RWE, among her clients
She trained at Allen & Overy, spending 12 years in total at the firm before joining BLP in 2012.

Since then, BLP's finance team has seen a large number of partner exits, with notable departures including former RBS restructuring head Matthew Kellett, who was BLP's head of finance at the time and has since joined EY, restructuring head Ben Larkin, who joined Jones Day in February, and a trio of real estate finance partners, led by then-head of real estate finance Laurence Rogers, to DLA Piper in the same month.

For McDermott, the hire marks a change from other recent laterals into the London office, which have focused on private client work. This month, the firm hired Bircham Dyson Bell partner Nicholas Holland in its London office, following the hires of Ziva Robertson in 2013, and her fellow Withers partner Astrid Owen in 2012.

O'Neill will become the firm's latest recruit when she joins at the end of this month.

"We're in the process of building out the energy practice in London," said McDermott energy partner Andrew Watson. "We've been looking around for some time for someone who's working in oil and gas, and we're thrilled to have beaten a number of firms who were competing to hire Lisa."

Watson said the firm intends to make several more hires in the energy group, as part of the growth of the London office's transaction practice.