Originally published on February 28, 2012 in our free BigLaw newsletter. Instead of reading BigLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.
Vivian Manning is a rare breed. A lawyer for more than a decade at the same firm, she then switched gears to became her firm's IT Manager. Vivian was looking forward to taking a little more time off than usual until her firm's managing partner agreed to merge with another slightly smaller firm. Today in BigLaw, Vivian kicks off a series of columns in which she'll take you inside her firm's merger, especially the technology component. We're thrilled that Vivian agreed to share her experience. This first installment features the backstory, initial considerations, and a clever psychological pre-merger tip. Also, don't miss the BigLaw Pick of the Week (subscribers only) for a report from Apple itself about the latest large firm to equip its lawyers with iPads.
INSIDE A LAW FIRM MERGER PART 1: BACKGROUND, INITIAL CONSIDERATIONS, AND A CLEVER PSYCHOLOGICAL TIP
Last autumn the law firm where I'd practiced law since 1989, later taking on the position of IT Manager in 2000, merged with another law firm in our city of about 150,000. Managing the technology aspects of a law firm merger was not how I envisioned sliding toward my approaching retirement years. I was thinking more along the lines of reducing some management responsibilities in favor of more time on the golf course, in the garden and tanning my tonsils in warmer, sunnier climes. Alas, it was not to be. Law firm mergers are not conducive to a relaxed schedule.
Today in BigLaw, I kick off a series of columns in which I take you inside our merger, particularly the technology aspects. With all the M&A activity among law firms lately, I hope this series of columns proves helpful. If you've gone through this process yourself, please reply and share your own tips.
The Pre-Merger Firms
When I started with Burgar Rowe in 1989, our legal team consisted of 6 partners, 1 counsel and 1 associate (me). Over the years we grew to 11 partners, 3 counsel, 10 associates, and a paralegal. We expanded in the usual manner, through the lateral hiring of associates, but also by bringing in sole practitioners. The law firm we merged with, Purser Dooley Cockburn Smith, was itself the result of an earlier merger of two smaller local firms. Overnight, on October 1, 2011, we grew from 23 lawyers to 37 lawyers and from approximately 65 people in 2 offices to 105 people in 3 offices. To say this near-overnight growth challenged our Technology Department would be an understatement of massive proportions.
The Merger Decision
The talks leading up to the merger decision focused mainly on the suitability of the firms joining together — primarily because of their complementary practice areas and their perceived common cultures. The partners in each firm had long and positive professional relationships with each other so in that sense, the decision to merge was an easy one, even though such a momentous decision is never easily reached.
Once the decision to merge was made, the fun began. In hindsight, the decision to merge was the easy part. Making it happen would be an entirely different animal and far from easy. While many aspects of the merger were beyond the purview of the Technology Department, law firm technology does manage to touch on nearly every aspect of firm life, so my team's role in the merger process would proves a crucial one.
Initial Considerations
We found ourselves in the middle of a process we had never before experienced. Bringing in sole practitioners over the years was no substitute for managing and implementing a full-blown merger. Bringing aboard a sole practitioner is geared toward enveloping them and their staff with our existing firm's technology, which never required much in the way of absorbing anything other than their data onto our network, along with necessary training. The merger was nothing like that.
Right away the importance of managing expectations rose to the surface as a primary concern. The merger would get all our attention, but we didn't have any real prior experience. A few things were bound to go less than smoothly along the way, despite our best efforts. It was important everyone understood and accepted that (including us).
One of my mantras over the next few months (in addition to the always valuable "This too shall pass") became — "Sometimes there is no perfect, or right, choice. We just have to make a choice and live with the consequences." We had to recognize and convey to everyone involved that not only would some decisions be made that, in hindsight, weren't optimal, but that some decisions might be the best we could make given the circumstances we faced. With that understanding in place, we moved to the next phase — making our lists and checking them twice (or two hundred times).
At the top of my list? Stop referring to each of the firms by their pre-merger names. At the initial planning stages of the merger we weren't even close to a new firm name, but still it felt wrong to continue to refer to the old names. The merger decision had been made even though it wouldn't take effect for months. We needed to divorce ourselves psychologically from thoughts of "us" and "them" to assign equal weight to each side of the technology merger equation. If we continued to refer to each firm by name, I was concerned that we would continue to identify more with one firm than the other.
Identifying the firms by their street address seemed easiest — so Burgar Rowe became "The Mulcaster Office" and Purser Dooley became "The Ferris Lane Office." This may sound like an insignificant point but changing our mindset made clear to everyone (and ourselves) that my department was treating the firms equally.
The Master Merger Checklist
Now that we had mentally prepared ourselves by accepting the imperfect future of the coming merger, and had "renamed" the firms in our own minds, we commenced our analysis. How much were the firms alike technologically and how much were they different? Which technology policies and procedures would be adopted by which firm? Which network would be adopted? Which software would be used? How would the firm networks connect?
The questions and issues were endless. Unfortunately our time frame was not. In my next installment — compiling the merger checklist.
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