Simmons & Simmons is to strengthen its London real estate practice with the hire of Richard Hopkinson-Woolley from DLA Piper.

Hopkinson-Woolley, whose key clients include Oxford Properties and Tishman Speyer, has a practice focusing on real estate funds, private equity and real estate finance. He leaves DLA less than three years after he joined the firm from Berwin Leighton Paisner.

John Kelsey, head of the Simmons real estate group in London, said:  "Real estate has been one of the most high performing groups in the firm. So, looking to the future, beefing up the real estate team is definitely part of the plan and bringing in Hoppo is a piece of that. We are continuing to look in the market for other people and there have been some discussions but we will have to wait and see."

News of his hire comes after Simmons confirmed in August that it had made a small number of lawyer redundancies in its London real estate practice, attributing the move to uncertainty around Brexit. It is understood the cuts affected fewer than 10 lawyers in its real estate practice, with some of those affected also working cross-practice in finance.

Last week, Legal Week reported that Simmons had boosted its capital markets practice in Milan with a double hire from White & Case. Meanwhile, in September, Simmons hired two Ashurst lawyers including the beleaguered firm's Brussels managing partner, Carl Meyntjens, as part of a corporate push in the Benelux region.

Simmons posted a 10% drop in profit per equity partner for the 2015-16 financial year to £585,000, while revenue edged up by 1.7% to £295.1m.