Over the last 10 years, dozens of Am Law firms have scrambled to find merger partners. New practice areas, geographic advantages, economies of scale-the rationales for these couplings are endless. But does all the happy talk really translate into bigger clients, busier associates and fatter pay packets?
To find out, we assessed the fortunes of eight firms from this year’s Am Law 100 that engaged in name-changing mergers with similarly sized partners in the past decade. We scrutinised their performances based on post-merger growth in revenue per lawyer (RPL), profits per partner and average compensation for all partners. Combinations with non-US firms were not included, nor were mergers with fewer than three years of post-merger results to analyse. As a benchmark, we looked at the average growth of The Am Law 100 by RPL, profits per partner and compensation-all partners. For firms where data was available, we also compared the growth of the merged firms with that of their predecessors.
