A small merger in central Pennsylvania will soon give Dickie, McCamey & Chilcote its 18th office, and its fifth in Pennsylvania.

Pittsburgh-based Dickie McCamey is set to merge with four-lawyer litigation firm McIntyre, Hartye & Sosnowski in Hollidaysburg, effective Jan. 1.

“Their geographic reach really allows us to cement coverage of the state from Philadelphia to Camp Hill,” Dickie McCamey managing director and chief operating officer Jeffrey Wiley said. The new group will “work in conjunction with our Harrisburg office to really cover the central part of the state,” he said.

Name partners John McIntyre, Frank Hartye and Mike Sosnowski are set to join Dickie McCamey as shareholders, and Vicki Kellogg will join as a principal. Their practice includes medical malpractice defense, products liability and insurance coverage work. Sosnowski said the firm handles “sophisticated civil litigation that isn't done by a lot of people between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg.”

The McIntyre Hartye lawyers reached out to Dickie McCamey about a potential merger over the summer, he said. The smaller firm's partners had known some of Dickie McCamey's lawyers for a number of years, and saw the firm as a good match culturally. The main advantage of merging, he said, is the ability to offer clients more services.

“We do a lot of health care litigation. There are a lot of trends in health care and law that are kind of going in the same direction,” Sosnowski said. “We wanted to make a change while it was still our choice and give ourselves the opportunity to make a good one.”

Wiley said he expects the new Hollidaysburg office to grow. Sosnowski agreed, noting that the Hollidaysburg practice currently has no associates, and may need to add some in the future. Until then, he said, it will be helpful to work remotely with Dickie McCamey lawyers in other offices to meet their needs.

Wiley noted that the combination also provides the McIntyre Hartye lawyers the opportunity to refer work to and get referrals from the Dickie McCamey lawyers elsewhere.

“Larger firms bring efficiencies and economies of scale, as well as that bigger platform,” he said. “I think all of those things together make it attractive to smaller firms to go with and join with midsize firms like us.”

After the merger, Dickie McCamey will have 178 attorneys across all of its offices. The firm opened in 1889 in Pittsburgh, and opened its first office outside Steel City in 1992. Its expansion has picked up steam in recent years. The firm opened in Denver and Buffalo, New York, in 2017, and made its entry into White Plains, New York, and Los Angeles in 2016.

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