He may have overseen more than 50 law firm combinations over the last decade – 12 since July alone – but Dentons chair Joe Andrew (pictured) is adamant that the double US tie-up his firm pulled off at the beginning of October is something completely different.
Pending approval by the partnerships, the 10,000-lawyer globetrotter will in January add another 300 bodies to its sprawling verein as it combines with 175-lawyer midwest firm Bingham Greenebaum Doll and 140-strong Pennsylvania-bred Cohen & Grigsby.
Since announcing that it was merging with New Zealand’s Kensington Swan at the end of July, Dentons has been signing tie-ups at an average of one per week, with firms in Honduras, South Korea, Uruguay, Argentina and five African countries joining the firm over the summer.
However, according to Andrew, the recent US deals are more than simply combinations with two regional players little known outside the states in which they operate. The move – which adds offices in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, bringing the firm’s US lawyer ranks to almost 1,100 – is the first step in Dentons’ leadership’s latest hyperbolic plan: building the first ‘truly national US law firm’. Dubbed Project Golden Spike to mark the 150th anniversary of the railway line that ‘brought the US together’, Andrew said: ‘It’s a symbol of unification and that’s what we want to do.’
It all started with Andrew’s own realisation that ‘there is no real national firm in the US’, by which he means that while the majority of large clients operate all across the US, law firms are small in proportion to the size of the country. He maintains that no full-service law firm has offices in all of the 20 most important legal centres in the US.
‘Why is that? Mergers are hard, particularly in the US – ego of leaderships; bringing together different partnership structures; clients want to have local relationships; and if you try to do laterals to open offices it’s expansive, risky and it takes decades to generate true relationships.’
Andrew’s solution? Lawyers at US firms joining Dentons will get dual-partnership status, becoming partners in newly-formed Dentons US, while remaining partners at their existing firms. Margins will be shared across the US-wide partnership, but individual firms will retain control on rates, client relationships and partnership admission.
As ever with a firm that rejects traditional yardsticks for success (Andrew is a well-known sceptic of the significance of profit per equity partner), the question is how to measure the plan’s success. Andrew pointed to three criteria: lawyers going up in rankings and in legal directories; expanding the client base, particularly with large companies; and more firms joining the project: ‘Each of those firms has access to data and does its due diligence.’
Like Dentons itself, the latest plan will polarise observers between those admiring the vision and those dismissing it as a PR stunt by a bunch of mid-market regional players. But with Andrew promising at least two more firms joining Dentons US by early next year and ‘more than half a dozen’ others in talks to follow suit, one thing is sure: this is only the beginning.