In an effort to create a new, large firm of over 800 lawyers, Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin PC plans to merge with Arnold & Porter LLP at the beginning of the new year. The new firm will keep the name Arnold & Porter, which will provide an incredible boost to the presence of the firm across California.
The new firm will have over 160 lawyers at its disposal in its three California offices: Silicon Valley, San Francisco and Silicon Valley. By adding over 80 attorneys to Northern California, the firm will quadruple its presence in the area.
Trent Norris, the head of the Silicone Valley and San Francisco offices, and partner in Arnold & Porter’s, believes adding Howard Rice opens a vast amount of opportunities to pursue major works of transactions across the technically savvy Norther California area for the first time.
Norris said, “It’s an opportunity we’ve missed, and we’re eager to pursue it alongside Howard Rice. It was a recognition on our part that this was a need for our clients.”
Since it 1954 when the firm was first founded, Howard Rice has worked independently. However, over time the legal work landscape has shifted quite a bit, according to Doug Winthrop, the managing partner at Howard Rice. He believes that accepting the opportunity to merge with Arnold & Porter is something that cannot be passed by because of its array of offices throughout the United States and Europe.
Winthrop expressed he feelings by saying, “We realized we could be doing a lot more for our clients if we had a deeper bench, a broader reach and increased geographic reach. We’ve watched our clients’ need changed; our clients absolutely have needs beyond the San Francisco Bay area, beyond the United States even.”
The services that Howard Rice provides with finances and transaction work are both going to be boosted by the merger. Arnold & Porter’s engages in regulatory and banking in Washington, while the antitrust practices by will truly bring the transactional work into unity.
The policy committee from Arnold & Porter’s stated, “Our bread-and-butter is high stakes commercial litigation, and Arnold & Porter is one of the premier litigation firms in the country.
This was the second of announcements of law firm mergers Tuesday. Denver-based Holme Roberts & Owen LLP announced a merger with St. Louis-based Bryan Cave. This merger has been rumored over the course of this past week. Throughout 2011, Altman Weil Inc. reported that 55 law firm mergers have taken place, while only 39 occurred last year.