What Makes a Successful Law Firm Merger? A Leader's View From Inside One of the Year's Biggest Combinations

This article was originally published on March 6, 2025 by The American Lawyer.

The fruitful outcome of Womble's biggest mergers was by no means a sure thing, its chair and CEO writes.

Law firm tie-ups are the high-stakes courtship of the legal world—part strategy, part synergy, and a substantial dose of risk.

Done right, such transactions can be transformative, fueling revenue growth and expanding geographic reach. But in an era of rapid consolidation, law firm leaders must remember that a successful merger—regardless of whether it's a regional tie-up or a cross-border megadeal—is much more than a contractual agreement: it’s a marriage of cultures, practices, and ambitions.

I know from experience. In 2017, our firm embarked on the transatlantic legal combination between U.S.-founded Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice and U.K.-based Bond Dickinson. The largest tie-up in a year that saw a record 102 law firm mergers or acquisitions, the Womble Bond Dickinson merger set the stage for a period of striking expansion, including increasing our gross revenue in the U.S. by 42.8% (from 2017 to 2023). Six years later we agreed to join forces with Lewis Roca, further expanding our national footprint and bringing us to more than 1,300 lawyers in the U.S. and the U.K.

Yet the fruitful outcome of these mergers was by no means a sure thing. Both deals required meticulous planning, transparent communication, and a shared commitment to long-term goals. Those fundamentals are more important than ever in today’s legal market, with the pipeline of expected deals in 2025 and beyond likely to further narrow the choice of potential merger partners—and raise the stakes for success.

Finding the Right Fit

For every announced law firm merger, there are dozens of failed matches where discussions didn’t make it the altar—not to mention deals that did close, but ultimately failed to deliver the expected results. Success hinges on finding the right partner and having the right motivations for joining forces.

A merger should always be a strategic decision, not a reactionary one. At Womble Bond, we believe successful mergers start from a position of strength, and are driven by clear shared objectives—whether those are expanding into new markets, enhancing service offerings, or deepening industry expertise. Firms that pursue combinations solely to chase revenue or address systemic issues (i.e., a partner exodus or plummeting profits) often find themselves disappointed. Additionally, mergers that fail to gain buy-in from attorneys, staff, or clients risk faltering in execution.

Take the 2007 merger that created Dewey & LeBoeuf. Intended to create an international powerhouse for corporate legal work, the transaction united two firms with different cultures that also both carried sizable levels of debt, according to media reports. Growth stalled during the financial crisis and never recovered, while pay raises aimed at luring and retaining star partners sowed discord among the ranks. By 2012, partners were fleeing, and the firm wound up in bankruptcy.

Finding the right merger partner requires vetting compatibility through multiple lenses: strategic, financial and cultural. When pursuing potential combinations, we focus on balancing economics and growth with maintaining our culture. If a firm presented a great financial opportunity but the cultural compatibility was lacking, we would choose not to proceed.

In both of our recent large mergers, cultural alignment was paramount. For the U.S./U.K. combination, both sides had already been working together through an alliance agreement struck the year before the merger deal. We learned each predecessor firm shared a similar approach to legal work and client relationships.

As Betty Temple, then-Womble Bond co-chair, said at the time: "This isn't just the combination of a big U.S. firm and a big U.K. firm. It’s the combination of a law office in Newcastle with one in Charlotte, an office in Baltimore with an office in Bristol and so on. This entire development was borne out of a desire to better serve the business communities in which Womble Bond Dickinson is rooted."

As Womble Bond expanded further, we sought to grow in large and midsize cities that drive innovation and technological change. For the merger with Lewis Roca, we focused on finding complementary practice capabilities—intellectual property, real estate, financial services, complex litigation and others—and ensuring regional strengths were enhanced, not diluted. Each side had footprints in complementary innovation hubs, including Boston, Charlotte, Denver, Nashville, Phoenix, Raleigh-Durham, San Francisco and Silicon Valley. The goal was to give attorneys from both sides new opportunities, with the combination opening up a breadth and depth of practices that neither could get on their own.

When I was a young lawyer at Piper Rudnick, I remember very vividly how excited I was to come into the office after the three-way tie-up with Gray Cary and DLA that created DLA Piper—you could see "Hello" emblazoned on our computer screens in dozens of languages, reflecting the global nature of the combination and all the opportunity that the expanded platform offered me as I built my practice. I felt the same sense of excitement in 2017, with the Bond Dickinson merger, and again with Lewis Roca. You want people to buy into that—and then of course execute on that enthusiasm.

Financial and Operational Alignment

The fiscal underpinnings of a merger are equally (if not more) critical. While a great culture certainly fosters a stickiness to the partnership and an espirit de corps among professional staff, even the most culturally aligned firms can start to fray if anticipated economic outcomes are not achieved. Both sides should bring solid financials to the table, and be clear about potential liabilities—pension-related debt, for example—to avoid unpleasant post-merger surprises.

Think beyond the balance sheet. Partnerships, compensation systems, and key financial metrics must also align to avoid post-merger friction. For instance, firms with black-box compensation models may struggle to integrate with merger partners with transparent systems; it's important to address those differences early in pre-deal discussions.

With the Lewis Roca merger, we both had open compensation systems, so there was transparency, and we spent a lot of time harmonizing the bands. What can be more challenging is when you're talking with a potential partner or large group acquisition, and the two parties have different business structures—such as an LLP versus a PC, which is more of a corporate structure. These types of issues must be ironed out before proceeding too far down the path to a transaction.

In our 2017 merger, aligning financial practices across continents required an open dialogue about expectations and long-term goals. Transparency in this area helped avoid potential conflicts and set the foundation for a unified firm. Similarly, in the more recent U.S. merger, we took care to sort out operational issues like partner promotion cycles and client billing practices well before the deal closed.

Transparent Communication, Intentional Integration

Once two firms decide to merge, it’s important for leadership to bring attorneys and staff on board early on. Frequent and open communication is essential to foster trust and buy-in, whether through town halls, meetings between practice groups from each side, or individual discussions to address concerns and anticipated benefits.

In both recent Womble Bond combinations, we invested significant time in cultivating relationships between lawyers from each firm, and fostering collaboration on client matters and new business opportunities. For example, in our effort to build a better firm together, we formed task groups early in the process to identify the policies from each legacy firm and either adopt the best practice from the two or, more often than not, harmonize the two separate policies into a new one now suitable for the combined firm's future. This transparency helped bridge gaps between legacy firms and ensured that everyone felt invested in the combined entity’s success.

That work doesn’t stop when a merger deal closes. For instance, after our 2017 combination, the firm set up a global board to oversee cooperation between the U.K. and U.S. operations, so that clients would have a consistent, integrated experience across the firm. We also developed cross-Atlantic exchange programs to deepen relationships between attorneys and expand their knowledge of different areas of law. Our energy practice embodies that global approach, with international legal teams coming together to address sector-wide issues across practice groups and international markets.

Ultimately, a merger's success hinges on its people. At Womble Bond, we strongly believe that firm management, programs, and operational processes should reflect the combined firm's identity, not just one side's legacy. In our most recent merger, Lewis Roca team members took on prominent leadership roles, including Ken Van Winkle serving as vice chair in the U.S., and several partners joining the firm's global board and governing board, as well as assuming leadership positions across U.S. practice groups and offices. We also adopted a number of Lewis Roca talent development programs that we saw could help strengthen our approach to training, including the Ascend program to provide professional and business development training to partners.

For firms considering a merger, it comes down to this: be strategic, be transparent, and prioritize cultural fit. With the right approach, a merger can be more than a growth opportunity—it can be a catalyst for lasting transformation.

Merrick Benn is Chair and CEO of Womble Bond Dickinson (US) and a member of the firm’s Global Board. With a broad base of experience that comes from more than 25 years as a global finance lawyer and having held numerous firm management positions, Mr. Benn oversees the firm’s domestic growth strategy, operations, profitability, and structural organization.

Reprinted with permission from the March 6, 2025, edition of The American Lawyer © 2026 ALM Global Properties, LLC. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited, contact 877-256-2472 or [email protected]

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