Bingham, McKee Nelson to Merge

[WSJ_law_blog]

News from the world of BigLaw: Bingham McCutchen and McKee Nelson are headed to the altar. The firms announced Monday morning that the firms will be one as of August 1. The firm will retain the Bingham McCutchen name, not entirely surprising given that the deal doesn’t exactly represent a marriage of equals: Bingham has 1000 lawyers in 12 offices; McKee Nelson has 120 lawyers in New York and D.C.

Something else that’s not entirely surprising: that a deal involving McKee Nelson is happening at all. The firm was hit hard by the recession; especially in the steep dropoff in work related to mortgage-backed and asset-backed securitizations, practices in which the firm had created a nice niche. Click here for a blog post from last November on layoffs at McKee.

“This is the right combination at the right time,” said Bingham chair Jay Zimmerman, noting McKee Nelson’s strength in tax, financial regulation and capital markets. “Legal and regulatory lines are being redrawn and are intersecting in ways they never have before. . . . The opportunity for us to add McKee Nelson’s market-leading practices in financial institutions litigation, capital markets and tax is extraordinary. These are quite simply some of the finest lawyers in the profession.”