In all, it took just seven days for partners at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe to pressure their respective firm leaders to call off merger talks. Those seven days included a strange fake news story and frustration for partners on both sides of the discussion.
Partners at Akin and Orrick said that there was not one single issue that killed the talks; it was more a feeling among partners that an Akin-Orrick combination wouldn’t be worth the headache of trying to bring the two firms together. (The National Law Journal examined what the combined firm would look like here.)
