DLA Piper’s $3-Million Meeting at Sea

What’s a law firm to do when it grows so big it can’t find a suitable venue on land to host a meeting of all its partners? The 4,200-lawyer firm DLA Piper’s solution is to charter a Royal Caribbean cruise ship.

The legal behemoth, which has a large Washington office among its 100-plus worldwide locations, is hosting a four-night excursion aboard the ship in May. The partners will set sail from Barcelona and head up the coast to Nice. Sure, difficulty finding a big enough hotel may have sparked the idea. But there’s also little doubt that the idea of a Mediterranean cruise sounded much more appealing than hunkering down in a Marriott conference room for a weekend.

The main purpose of the cruise is for the partners to get to know one another better and find opportunities to work together. Meetings and focus groups are scheduled throughout the trip. But there will be time for fun, too. The firm hosted a similar cruise in 2008, and social events included winetasting, mini-golf, and rock climbing.

Of course, none of this comes cheap. The firm chartered Royal Caribbean’s Liberty of the Seas, which belongs to the Freedom class of ships. According to Royal Caribbean’s website, chartering a Freedom liner for four nights during peak season, March through August, costs $3.1 million—not including booze.

For that much money, here’s hoping there are no norovirus outbreaks—and, more important, that everyone brings appropriate swimwear.

This article appears in the May 2013 issue of The Washingtonian.

Marisa M. Kashino

Senior Editor

Marisa M. Kashino joined Washingtonian in 2009 as a staff writer, and became a senior editor in 2014. She was previously a reporter for Legal Times and the National Law Journal. She recently wrote “A Murder on the Rappahannock,” a two-part investigation into the troubling, decades-old slaying of a young mother in rural Virginia. Kashino lives in Northeast DC with her husband, two dogs, and two cats.