It can’t be easy for a law firm to decide to shut down an office, especially one that was the firm’s first overseas outpost and had been going for 60 years. But last week we learned that Davis Polk has made that call: It will be closing its Paris office by the end of the year. 

Law.com correspondent Anne Bagamery broke the news that Davis Polk managing partner Neil Barr informed the firm in mid-September that, after a strategic review of the French law practice, the firm had decided to close the Paris office, an office founded in 1962—the same year astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth and the Cold War escalated with the Cuban Missile Crisis, bringing the world to the brink of war.