San Francisco’s Pillsbury Winthrop and Washington DC’s Shaw Pittman are in merger talks to create a top-15 US giant with 1,050 lawyers in the latest merger bid to hit the consolidating national legal market.

As exclusively revealed on www.legalweek.com (18 January), the two firms are in discussions to form a pan-US practice with combined revenues of $620m (£333m) across 22 locations.