Corporate & Securities Law

Law Firm Mergers: Gone in 60 Seconds

By John Wallbillich

Enough of the Howrey retrospective, we wish everyone one involved the best. Today, something to show that these things happen, and the law moves on.

One angle profiled on Day 2 of this review was that a merger was never really an option for Howrey. This explains why those early stories involving Winston & Strawn as a potential merger partner faded away quickly.

I thought this sounded familiar, so I went back into the Wired GC super-secret archives, to find a video that was posted for only a few days. I found it.

Back in August of 2008, there was talk of a potential merger between Heller Ehrman and Mayer Brown. These rumors proved unfounded, and Heller Ehrman was effectively done a month later. Shortly after the first reports of merger talks, I prepared a short video commentary on the subject of large law firm mergers. Within a few days of that posting, when Heller’s true problems started to emerge, I pulled the plug on it.

Since the statute has probably run at this point, I post it again below. Not sure for how long.

It still has a bit of currency, some 30 months later:

Full post as published by The Wired GC on March 18, 2011 (boomark / email).