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Law Firm Merger Mania: Locke Lord / Edwards Wildman Deal Wins Approval

When will the merger go into effect, and how big will the post-merger firm be?

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In September, Locke Lord and Edwards Wildman Palmer announced their signing of a letter of intent to merge. Today, less than three months later, the firms are announcing that the merger will proceed. On January 10, 2015, the world will welcome Locke Lord Edwards.

Both partnerships voted in favor of the transaction last week, according to the American Lawyer. The post-merger entity is expected to have 1,000 lawyers and $675 million in annual gross revenue, which would put Locke Lord Edwards in the top 50 of the Am Law 100 rankings, which are based on revenue, and in the top 50 of the Global 100 firms when ranked by headcount.

It isn’t shocking that the partnerships voted for the merger. Most Biglaw “partnerships” nowadays are far from democratic institutions; when the most powerful partners favor something, everyone else tends to fall in line. At any given firm, a fraction of the partners — a third, a quarter, it will vary from place to place — are the people calling all the shots.

So at Locke Lord, once chair Jerry Clements and other members of leadership decided in favor of the merger, it became highly likely that it would be approved (barring some revolt from the rank-and-file partners). As for Edwards Wildman, the firm’s dire straits made it similarly probable that the deal would get the thumbs up. Who wouldn’t vote for survival over dissolution?

There were, of course, some potential spoilers to the deal. Last month, some observers wondered whether partner defections from Edwards Wildman might scuttle the merger. But it’s pretty standard to see partner turnover in advance of a combination, and in this case, it wasn’t enough to interfere with the merger.

Congratulations to Locke Lord and Edwards Wildman — and to Jerry Clements, who will lead the combined firm. Law firm mergers don’t always work out well — look at Bingham, which carried out multiple mergers before basically falling apart — but in an increasingly competitive, perhaps Darwinian law firm environment, sometimes you don’t have a choice between eating or being eaten.

P.S. The new firm will have a strong presence in Texas, which Above the Law will be visiting this week. If you’d like to attend our event in Dallas on Wednesday night, which is free and open to the public, please RSVP here. We hope to see y’all there!

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Locke Lord, Edwards Wildman Palmer Partners Approve Merger [American Lawyer]

Earlier: 6 Things Managing Partners Need To Know About Law Firm Mergers

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