"Corporate has long been a focus of ours as a group to add to, particularly on the private equity side," says Morgan Lewis & Bockius London managing partner Frances Murphy, of the firm's latest team hire.

The addition of three corporate partners from Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) – London private equity head Mark Geday and corporate partners Nicholas Moore and Tomasz Wozniak – has boosted Morgan Lewis's corporate team by 60%, taking it from five partners to eight.

The hires are the latest in a string of additions to the office, which has more than tripled its London lawyer count during the last five years from about 25 to 80.

And the recruitment is not going to end here, with Murphy acknowledging a need to build out the corporate team beyond the latest partner additions, all of whom previously spent time in HSF's Moscow office.

Earlier this year, Wozniak was part of the HSF team that acted opposite Morgan Lewis on Uber's $3.73bn (£2.88bn) combination of its ridesharing business in Russia and neighbouring Commonwealth of Independent States countries with Russian taxi company Yandex.

Murphy says: "With three leading lights like these, they're going to need added resources. We will be ensuring that they have the right level of support so that they are able to fully meet clients' needs."

"None of these hires are fullstops – it's all part of our continuous drive to expand strategically with really high-quality lawyers," Murphy added.

Last year the firm took on two Norton Rose Fulbright partners, Chris Warren-Smith and Melanie Ryan, to bolster its global investigations and disputes team.

Murphy herself has only been with Morgan Lewis for four years, joining as part of a team of more than 700 lawyers from defunct firm Bingham McCutchen. The London office also gained a six-partner, 18-lawyer team from Dewey & LeBoeuf before that firm collapsed in 2012, including former London managing partner Peter Sharp.

Recent major mandates for the firm's London office have included advising the Republic of Tajikistan on its $500m inaugural international securities offering, on which City capital markets partner Carter Brod – also a former Dewey lawyer – led the firm's team.

Murphy adds: "We're continuing to grow across key practice areas, with a focus on finance and investment management. We are also expanding in antitrust, as well as employment with recent internal partner appointments in each group. This is in addition to recent hires in litigation too."