Morgan Lewis & Bockius has converted its London and Paris offices to a UK limited liability partnership (LLP), just days after the acquisition of more than 700 lawyers from Bingham McCutchen.

The decision to convert was made at the beginning of the year prior to the Bingham deal, and to give the City outpost greater liability protection in the wake of the office's expansion.

Morgan Lewis chair Jami McKeon, Philadelphia-based practice managing partner Steven Wall and New York managing partner of operations David Pollak, all of whom sit on Morgan Lewis' board in the US, have been registered as foreign solicitors with the SRA, and added to the UK LLP with 22 other partners.

The UK LLP was first registered in 2012, but remained dormant until last month.

"For regulatory reasons, all these international firms have to be arm's length," commented one LLP expert. "It's just not possible to be a subsidiary of a US LLP without it being a huge headache, but it's a sensible move to move to UK LLP status, as nearly all US firms have done."

Last week, Morgan Lewis added a further 525 lawyers, legal professionals and staff from Bingham, ten days after voting to admit 226 partners from the Boston-headquartered firm, which is now set to dissolve.

In London, competition partner Frances Murphy and associate Roderick Farningham have both made the move to Morgan Lewis.

A number of lawyers at the firm have not moved over to Morgan Lewis, including around 80 partners in the US and Asia. Since the deal went through, a number of Bingham partners have moved to firms including Seyfarth Shaw and Proskauer Rose.

As of Friday (28 November), Bingham's website listed just 39 partners whose profiles did not describe them as Morgan Lewis lawyers. Of these, 25 are in Tokyo, with the remainder split between San Francisco, Boston, Lexington, Hong Kong, New York and Washington DC.