Law Firms Go Big or Go Home

Tom Borman, LawFuel contributing editor

The legal scene in 2025 has commenced with a wave of law firm mergers involving at least six combinations of Am Law 100 law firms that became effective in January 2025 and which promise further changes ahead for the new year.

The most-searched story involving law firms in the past seven days appears to be the wave of law firm mergers that took effect on January 1, 2025. Several major law firm combinations became official at the start of the new year, reshaping the global legal landscape[1][3].

“More and more firms are appreciating the benefits of scale and recognizing that it’s hard to build enough scale with one-offs, laterals, and an occasional group hire,” Kent Zimmermann, a principal at Zeughauser Group who advises on law firm mergers told Bloomberg Law in a report last year. “So they’re pursuing mergers and acquisitions, and that’s true for a large and growing group of firms” .

Notable mergers include Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders and Locke Lord, Womble Bond Dickinson and Lewis Roca, and Ballard Spahr and Lane Powell.
The mergers are creating large firms with expanded geographic reach and practice areas. The Womble Bond Dickinson and Lewis Roca merger, for instance, created a firm with 1,300 lawyers spanning the US and UK.
The trend is driven by firms seeking greater scale to enhance reputations, reach new clients and talent in different markets, and distribute rising expenses across more attorneys.
Industry experts note that the early months following a merger are critical and volatile periods as firms work to integrate leadership, compensation systems, and offices.
And the mergers can create new issues for the firms – such as the potential loss of culture when combining different organizations, integration issues including matching operational and compensation systems and potential client conflict issues.
The high failure rate of mergers in general suggests that law firms need to approach these combinations with an equal measure of both caution and careful planning.

This surge of law firm combinations at the start of 2025 represents a significant reshaping of the legal services market, with implications for competition, client service, and the broader legal industry landscape. The firms must weigh the potential benefits of mergers against the risks and challenges they present.