US firm Dechert has hired DLA Piper's City partner Paul Fleming, a specialist insolvency litigator with a focus on asset tracing and recovery.

Fleming, who joined DLA Piper in 1995 and made partner in 1999, counts PwC, KPMG and Deloitte as key clients.

During the financial crisis, Fleming acted as conflict counsel for PwC on a range of issues related to the Lehman Brothers estate including on claims of up to £7bn.

During this period, he also advised the creditors of bankrupt former Leyton Orient FC vice-chairman Nicholas Levene, then London restructuring head Michael Fiddy and currently global co-chair of DLA Piper's restructuring group.

Fleming works in the restructuring practice at the firm and his exit will take the group's partner count in London down to 19.

His departure follows a raft of partner exits from DLA Piper's London litigation practice.

Last year, DLA Piper white-collar crime partner Jo Rickards, who advised former News of the World editor Andy Coulson in the recent phone-hacking trial, moved to Kingsley Napley and long serving competition partner Martin Rees joined legacy Squire Sanders' regulatory practice.

Before that, Dechert hired Neil Gerrard in 2011, formerly DLA Piper's joint global head of litigation and now deputy chair of Dechert's global litigation practice group.

In the same year, Dechert also recruited DLA Piper partner Miriam Gonzalez – the wife of former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg – as the new head of the firm's EU trade and EU government affairs practice.

Earlier this month DLA Piper announced that it had bulked up its litigation and restructuring practices with a team of nine lawyers from Ashurst in Italy.

The Ashurst team, spread across Rome and Milan, includes three partners and six lawyers.