Law Firm Giant Adds Thousands Of Lawyers, Eyes Even More

Massive law firm says it plans to keep on growing.

Can anything stop the massive amoeba of a law firm that is Dentons?

Already a firm of mammoth proportions, Dentons took time away from complaining about Am Law to announce that they’ve finalized their long-discussed deal to acquire McKenna Long & Aldridge, adding 475 lawyers, professionals and other timekeepers. This brings Dentons up to 1,100 lawyers and professionals spread across 21 offices in the United States alone.

How monolithic is Dentons? As Staci Zaretsky noted the other day, the merger brings former DNC Chair Howard Dean and former Speaker Newt Gingrich into the same shop. That’s a big tent.

Earlier this year, the firm announced plans to create a verein with Dacheng Law Offices, one of the largest firms in China, bringing an additional 2,000+ lawyers under the Dentons umbrella. With Dacheng, Dentons is the largest law firm in the world with 6,600+ lawyers. You couldn’t even fit that many lawyers on a cruise ship for a needlessly decadent meeting… like some law firms have.

But apparently, adding thousands of lawyers over the first six months of 2015 isn’t enough for Dentons. In an interview with Big Law Business, Dentons Chairman Joe Andrew and CEO Elliott Portnoy spoke about the firm’s continued plans for growth, noting that the firm is in merger talks with multiple other firms and hunting for overlooked markets to spread their influence. Andrew describes the firm’s philosophy:

“We’re trying to build the law firm of the future,” said Andrew. “We believe the quality question that people ask us, ‘Do you have the right person we need?’… is going to have a quantity answer: You need to have more lawyers, and more expertise, to get disputes solved and deals done.”

He added, “They only care about if you have the right one, or the right team. It’s simply mathematically logical that we’ll have the right one if we have more lawyers.”

“Quality over Quantity” recast as “Quality is Quantity.” Hey Dentons, the Borg called and they want their business model back.

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Seriously though, the fact that Dentons is focusing its expansion on underserved markets presents a curious case. On the one hand, moving into new markets reduces the risk of redundancies and associated layoffs, not to mention the risk of being crowded out by established Biglaw competitors. On the other hand, some markets are underserved for a reason. Can Dentons justify the overhead of an additional office? Wouldn’t a client in Minneapolis (a market Andrew specifically cited in the Big Law Business talk) be satisfied with Biglaw attorneys flying in from Chicago?

Today, Dentons will hold cake-cuttings and happy hours in its offices across the country to celebrate the merger. So that’s nice. Those other pesky concerns can wait.

But they remain weighty concerns. After all, no one wants to be the next Bingham.

Legal Giant Dentons Seals McKenna Union [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

Earlier: Law Firm Rents Entire Cruise Liner For Partner Meeting While the Rest of You Look for Work
World’s Biggest Law Firm Wants To Blow Up The Whole Am Law 100 Rankings
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