Category Archives: Lateral Partners

2023 and Big Law’s Accelerating Contraction

It was refreshing to hear Jonathan Harmon, Chairman of 189 year-old Richmond-based McGuireWoods, declare last week what most of his BigLaw peers are or should be thinking:  “We are looking to grow and aggressively looking to talk to firms who are of the mindset.  I believe that the market’s consolidating and that you’re going to have to have scale.”  See McGuireWoods ‘Aggressively’ Seeks Merger Partner, Chairman Says.   The extent to which McGuireWoods will be successful in its efforts to find firms to acquire or with which to merge remains to be seen, but we have no doubt that they are more likely to be successful than firms waiting for opportunities to come in over the transom.  Mergers and acquisitions are inevitably fraught with obstacles and challenges, and thorough market due diligence of merger and acquisition opportunities obviously maximizes the potential to find suitable partners while minimizing the risk of stagnation and failure.  As Harmon elaborated: “Finding the right firm to acquire, merge with, is hard,” recollecting an acquisition a few years ago that turned out to be a “disaster” as the new attoneys “weren’t culturally aligned” with the venerable Richmond firm.  Id.  You have to be aggressive, you have to expect that most of your conversations will not lead to a marriage, and accept that nothing ventured usually equals nothing gained and a passive approach is less likely to yield positive results.  As Harmon put it, “I’m more frank about it.  If you’re coy and you’re pretending ‘Hey, I don’t want to date,’ you may not get one.”  Id.  

The good news for Harmon and like-minded firm leaders is that there is a substantial array of attractive merger candidates for robust and healthy firms.  As to McGuireWoods, with gross revenues rising 16% over the last five years to its current level of just south of $1B and profits per equity partner increasing at an even faster rate over the same period to just south of $2M, there can be no doubt that they will be seriously considered as a merger partner by more big firms whether those firms choose to remain coy about their respective appetites for exploring or not.  Moreover, as the geopolitical climate continues to feel unstable and financial markets remain volatile and at levels substantially off their highs of two years ago, major players are likely to be less brash and confident about their ability to thrive on their own or remain competitive merely through organic or individual or small group lateral growth.  Finally, law firms are continually facing new competition from non-attorneys operating ventures seeking to provide comparable legal services at lower rates.  See id.   All of which will lead to more firms talking to one another, and more mergers and acquisitions. See also Law firm mergers gained steam in 2022, with more on the way in 2023, and Wake Up Call: Law Firm Mergers Apt to Rise in 2023, Report Says.  And see McKinsey’s 10 Principles for Successful Law Firm Mergers, which succinctly notes as follows:  “Market forces have led to the consolidation of a number of professional services sectors. In accounting, for example, the Big Four account for more than 60% of the U.S. market. There is good reason for this: research has shown that across industries, organizations with a systemic M&A strategy delivered better shareholder returns. Organizations that relied solely on organic growth, on the other hand, performed relatively poorly.  Legal services are not immune to this trend: consolidation is well under way, albeit not to the same extent as in other sectors. In 2017, the largest five law firms by revenue accounted for 8% of the American Lawyer 200 revenue pool. By the end of 2021, that figure had risen to 14%… [A]s market pressures intensify and the first $10 billion firms emerge, the case for M&A is becoming stronger.”  Id.

So excellent work, Jonathan Harmon, and kudos to you for being so refreshingly straightforward.  We are certain that McGuireWoods’ future is bright, and are on board to assist you and like-minded BigLaw leaders in helping to take your extraordinary firms to even greater heights!

 

BigLaw’s Heartbreak Hill

Anyone following the market of BigLaw is aware that over the course of the past two decades, AmLaw 100 firms have collapsed or been acquired at the rate of one every year-and-a-half or so, remembering with either nostalgia or disdain once venerable names like Brobeck, Coudert Brothers, Heller Ehrman, Thelen, Brown Raysman, Thacher Profitt, McKee Nelson, Dreier, Howrey, Dewey & LeBoeuf, Wolf Block, Bingham McCutcheon, and Chadbourne.  The demise of most of these firms can be attributed primarily to one fatal flaw which manifested during the various crises we’ve collectively experienced since the onset of this millennium: irrational exuberance and the dot-com bubble, greed and the sub-prime bubble or lack of practice area-diversity and the great recession. Others took stock during periods of relatively stability, arriving at sanguine decisions to salvage what remained viable and attach to a stronger ship or simply dissolve. Either way, the market of BigLaw is contracting quickly and in constant flux, the current pandemic offering no respite.

At the onset of Covid-19, BigLaw by and large halted lateral partner hiring. But as the pandemic continued on with no end in sight, while weaker and more risk-averse firms stagnated on the lateral partner acquisition front many simultaneously suffering increased rates of lateral partner departures, stronger and less risk-averse firms solidified their respective bases acquiring aggressively on the lateral partner market thus increasing revenue and profitability gaps and rendering weaker and less aggressive firms more vulnerable and further diminishing their ability to effectively compete.

Specifically, over the course of this pandemic during which lateral partner activity has dropped approximately thirty percent from pre-pandemic rates (see https://www.law.com/dailybusinessreview/2020/10/08/dragged-down-by-finance-and-energy-the-lateral-market-has-cratered/), firms that have pushed hard and achieved net gains on the lateral partner acquisition front thus widening the gap between them and their competitors include King & Spalding, McDermott, DLA, Greenberg Traurig and Cozen O’Connor (see https://www.law.com/americanlawyer/2020/10/12/opportunity-in-crisis-these-firms-seized-on-an-unusual-lateral-hiring-market-in-2020/, citing data accumulated by legal consultancy firm Decipher)). In contrast, from January through August 2020, Boies, Schiller & Flexner hemorrhaged 50 of its 142 partners or over one-third of its partnership while only adding two lateral partners during the same period. (See https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/these-larger-law-firms-had-the-most-partner-exits-one-firm-says-pandemic-changed-career-plans/).

Over the next few months we can expect to see more firms coming out of lateral partner hibernation and anticipate hiring approaching pre-pandemic rates, with continuing strong lateral activity in bankruptcy and data privacy and increasing movement in labor and employment, white collar and other regulatory specialties. That said, as our fiercely competitive market works its way through these current challenging times, the pack of leading firms will continue to dwindle in number and distance itself from weaker or more risk-averse firms, some of which will inevitably be acquired or dissolve as BigLaw further contracts.

Thankfully and much more importantly though, now with an effective Covid-19 vaccine apparently only months away, we may finally be approaching the top of this particularly excruciating Heartbreak Hill. In the meantime, we at Hanover Legal remain on call and available to assist law firm managers and partners with whom we are privileged to work towards the achievement of their goals with respect to the market, as we have during the previous challenging periods we have experienced together since our founding in 2000.

Stay safe and healthy and Happy Holidays!

Wishes and Predictions

While we are all relishing our last day of this holiday season and gearing up for 2019 and the inevitable challenges the new year will bring, we thought it may be worthwhile to offer a few predictions as to the landscape of BigLaw during the year to come:

  • At least one AmLaw 50 firm will dissolve or be acquired;
  • At least two AmLaw 100 firms will dissolve or be acquired;
  • There will be a record number of lateral partner moves among the AmLaw 100 firms;
  • There will be a record number of law firm mergers among the AmLaw 200 firms;
  • All but one of the current AmLaw 50 firms will post increased revenue over 2018;
  • 48 of the current AmLaw 50 firms will post increased profitability over 2018;
  • AmLaw 50 firms will see record numbers of partner departures leaving to join boutiques or start boutiques of their own;
  • No transatlantic merger of Global 50 firms will be consummated.

With those predictions on the table, we look forward to reviewing each of our major firms’ reports of their own 2018 performance and tracking their respective performances in 2019 — wishing all of them the best of luck as the gun goes off bright and early tomorrow morning and while we commence our own 19th year of offering support to their attorneys and managing partners as they face their inevitable challenges over the course of the upcoming twelve months!