Richman Greer, a 15-lawyer South Florida litigation boutique, will be no more after Jan. 1, when the firm is set to combine with Stamford, Connecticut-based Day Pitney.

Day Pitney will absorb Richman Greer's offices in Miami and West Palm Beach, with nine of its new attorneys operating out of Miami. The deal expands Day Pitney's head count in Florida from seven to 22 attorneys.

“We had targeted the Florida market for some time,” said Day Pitney managing partner Thomas Goldberg, who took over as head of the firm earlier this year.

Day Pitney first expanded into Florida through a 2016 merger with seven-lawyer boutique Chapin, Ballerano & Cheslack, which had offices in Delray Beach and Boca Raton. The combination allowed Day Pitney to expand its trust and estates offerings, but the Am Law 200 firm still wanted to build its presence on the ground in Florida, Goldberg said.

Meanwhile, Richman Greer, which earlier this year lost three of its litigators to GrayRobinson as the Florida-based firm opened a new office in West Palm Beach, was contemplating its own future.

Founded in 1961, Richman Greer has handled litigation over the years for a roster of regional and national clients that has included 3M, Citigroup and Merryl Lynch, and it has also taken on some transactional work and complex estate and trust work for companies and individuals.

Along the way, many of the boutique's international clients began asking that the firm take more of an expansive role and provide additional services, said Manuel Garcia-Linares, managing partner of Richman Greer.

“We have been looking at what is the best way for us to be able to expand the nonlitigation portion of our practice,” said Garcia-Linares. “Day Pitney became a great option, and we're very excited about it.”

While there were initially some concerns about joining a larger partnership, Garcia-Linares said it became apparent that the two firms were similar in their culture and that their clients were compatible.

“It's taken about a year to get to this point, but we're really excited to become their South Florida litigation practice,” Garcia-Linares said. “We can immediately jump in and handle all their litigation in the state.”

Day Pitney, meanwhile, sees the move as part of a larger Florida strategy.

As its client base has a continued interest in Florida, the 252-lawyer firm will work to build out a full range of sophisticated services in the state, Goldberg said.

“We have some big plans together to expand the offices and to immediately go out into the marketplace and recruit,” Garcia-Linares said.

Earlier this year, Day Pitney added outgoing Connecticut Supreme Court Chief Justice Chase Rogers as a partner in its appellate practice in Hartford. In August, it brought on former Mercedes-Benz USA in-house counsel Tommy Shi as its new director of diversity and inclusion.