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Former UK prime minister Lord David Cameron is in talks to join the law firm and lobbyist DLA Piper as a consultant, the latest of several private sector roles he has taken in the wake of his departure from the government last year.
Cameron would advise the law firm and its leaders on geopolitical risks, according to two people with knowledge of the move, who cautioned that details of the role are not yet finalised.
DLA Piper, ranked the world’s third-largest law firm by revenue, is a registered lobbyist in the US and the UK, though one of the people said the former premier would not be involved in lobbying.
“He’s an incredibly intelligent and curious person who’s going to play an important role advising [the firm] on different geographies and geopolitical risks,” the person said.
Cameron was prime minister of the UK’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition from 2010 to 2015 and then led the subsequent Conservative government until he resigned after losing the Brexit referendum in 2016. He spent several years in the private sector before returning to government for a short stint as foreign secretary from 2023 to 2024.
In 2021 he suffered reputational damage when he got caught up in a major scandal after the FT revealed the scale of his lobbying for Greensill Capital, a failed supply chain finance company
Cameron lobbied ministers and civil servants 56 times to try to secure Greensill access to state-run Covid-19 debt schemes.
Greensill’s collapse in 2021 led to criminal investigations in the UK, Germany and Switzerland. Cameron’s conduct is not thought to be the subject of those investigations. A committee of UK lawmakers said he showed a “significant lack of judgment” in his work for the company but did not break lobbying rules.
The move to DLA Piper would require approval from Britain’s Advisory Committee on Business Appointments. Acoba rules require ministers and senior civil servants to secure clearance for two years after leaving the government, to lower the potential of privileged information being used for personal gain.
The body cannot block an appointment, but it can advise that the role is “unsuitable”.
A DLA Piper spokesperson confirmed discussions were under way and declined to comment further. A spokesman for Cameron did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The post would be the latest Cameron has taken since he left government last year. He is advising Finback Investment Partners, a private equity firm founded and chaired by Jeb Bush, the brother of former US president George W Bush. He is also an adviser to London-based hedge fund Caxton and Florida-based freight payments business PayCargo.
He has undertaken a string of speaking engagements around the world. In March he gave public addresses in Chicago, Switzerland, Singapore and Hong Kong.
DLA Piper appears on the UK lobbying register because of its public affairs work. The company says it provides “legislative and parliamentary advocacy and public services and . . . strategic communications advice”.
Cameron would be one of several former political and diplomatic figures advising the law firm. Former Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell is a consultant to DLA Piper, and was previously chair.
DLA Piper was established two decades ago through the merger of UK-based DLA and two US-based firms, Piper Rudnick and Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich. It operates through a Swiss verein, a legal structure that allows its offices around the world to adopt the same brand but keep finances separate.
