Stock image puzzle pieces (Photo: Shutterstock)

It's still barely 2020, but two major law firm unions are already official in the New Year—and more mergers are on the way that promise to help reshuffle the Am Law 200.

Wednesday saw the ink dry on the mergers creating Taft—the result of Cincinnati-based Taft Stettinius & Hollister merging with Minneapolis-based Briggs & Morgan—and Lathrop GPM, which is the offspring of Kansas City, Missouri-based Lathrop Gage and Minneapolis-based Gray Plant Mooty.

Taft now boasts 600-plus lawyers across 12 offices, while Lathrop GPM says it has nearly 400 lawyers across 14 offices. The merged firms' combined revenues have Taft poised to claim a berth in the Am Law 100, and Lathop likely to catapult from the lower to the middle Second Hundred.

Leaders at both Taft and Lathrop GPM said their respective mergers went as smoothly as they could have hoped.

"There were no hiccups or problems we didn't anticipate," said Steven Ryan, the partner in charge of Taft's Minneapolis office. Taft managing partner Robert Hicks expressed similar sentiments, saying while there was some "scrambling" at one point, "it couldn't have gone any better."

Lathrop GPM managing partner Cameron Garrison said they established an integration committee that compiled a to-do list of tasks with deadlines.

"As you can image, a combination of this size takes a lot of heavy lifting, and attorneys and staff throughout the organization have done a phenomenal job implementing the combination in a short amount of time," Garrison said.

Four partners and one associate from Briggs & Morgan defected before the merger was complete, Ryan said. Those five lawyers "decided the combined platform wasn't the best shift for their practices," and joined smaller firms, he added.

Garrison didn't say whether any lawyers left either firm as a result of the Lathrop GPM tie-up. Instead, he noted that "the beginning of the year is a time when some attorneys make the decision to leave for other opportunities. This happens for a variety of reasons."

Garrison said Lathrop GPM was "extremely diligent" in checking for client conflicts.

"We feel confident in our ability to serve our clients and we look forward to continuing our longtime relationships with them," Garrison said.

Taft identified 15 cases in which lawyers at the legacy firms were representing clients who were adversaries in other matters, Hicks said. Taft obtained conflict waivers in nearly every case and only had to break ties with one or two clients, he added.

Hicks said in the four months between the merger announcement and its completion, Briggs & Morgan and Taft Stettinius & Hollister referred clients to one another 25 times.

Taft is holding an all-lawyer retreat in Scottsdale, Arizona, later this month, Ryan said.

"We will come together… to begin really putting the details on what the combined firm is going to look like, how we're going to work together and collaborate," Ryan said. "We're tremendously excited about where things stand today."

Garrison said both Lathrop Gage and Gray Plant Mooty traditionally held their partner retreats in the fall, "and our executive board will, of course, be discussing future retreat plans for Lathrop GPM."

Apart from Taft and Lathrop GPM, 10 more law firm mergers are scheduled to close in the first quarter of 2020, according to consultancy Fairfax Associates. This includes Dentons' combinations with Indianapolis-based Bingham Greenebaum Doll and Pittsburgh-based Cohen & Grigsby, as a part of Dentons' "Golden Spike" strategy to ostensibly create the first national law firm in the U.S.

A Dentons spokeswoman said they "continue to anticipate launching sometime in January," but wouldn't give a specific date.

Starting Feb. 1, Faegre Baker Daniels in Minneapolis will merge with Drinker Biddle & Reath in Philadelphia to create Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath, an Am Law 50 firm with more than 1,300 lawyers and consultants with 22 offices in the U.S. and abroad.

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