In less than a month, Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough is set to consummate its merger with Broad and Cassel, creating a 725-lawyer firm and adding a major Florida presence to the firm’s existing reach across a dozen states.

Those changes were a big draw for Marcus Lemon, a public-private partnership (P3) specialist in Washington, D.C. And Lemon—who served as chief counsel in the Federal Highway Administration under former President George W. Bush and later led the Trump administration’s agency landing team for the U.S. Department of Transportation—isn’t waiting for the merger to be finalized to cast his lot with the firm.