Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (BCLP) has agreed a post-merger deal for new City offices as legacy Bryan Cave's London lawyers prepare to move in with their new colleagues.

The firm has today (26 April) exchanged contracts to move into Governor's House, a 125,000 sq ft building at 5 Laurence Pountney Hill, between London Cannon Street and Monument stations.

The new offices are a short walk from BCLP's current London HQ at Adelaide House. The firm is is currently in talks with its landlord about what space it will retain in the building, where it has been based since 1970 when the firm was known as Berwin Leighton.

The 3 April merger of Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) and Bryan Cave means the new firm currently has two London offices. Legacy Bryan Cave's 44,000 sq ft London base at 88 Wood Street, which has a lease running until August 2022, is currently on the market.

That office houses about 38 lawyers and 14 partners, who are moving into Adelaide House in phases across the next month.

Legacy BLP previously also had an additional 87,755 sq ft of office space at the nearby Magnus House, but moved all of the lawyers and staff based there to Adelaide House in 2016.

The firm has occupied the whole of the Adelaide House building, which has 12 floors, since 2005. Three of the floors have been upgraded to become mainly open plan, while some of the remaining floors have been redesigned to make better use of the available space.

The merger of BLP and Bryan Cave created a new $900m, 1,600-lawyer firm with 32 offices in 11 countries around the world. Unlike many other recent transatlantic mergers, the firms have pushed forward with full financial integration.

BCLP will operate to a calendar year-end using US-style cash accounting, with the legacy UK arm ditching both its April financial year-end and accruals accounting system, as well as its lockstep, with all partners paid on a hybrid system more closely aligned with the US firm's structure.