Kaye Scholer and Arnold & Porter to Combine

The day has arrived. Six months after word of the talks first trickled out , Kaye Scholer and Arnold & Porter are set to combine, the firms announced on Thursday.

The new firm, effective Jan. 1, will be called Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP and staff roughly 1,000 lawyers across nine domestic and four international offices.

Since talks publicly surfaced, legal consultants spoke about how the combination would marry Arnold & Porter’s Washington, D.C. presence, which has a focus on regulatory, litigation and transactional matters, with Kaye Scholer’s New York presence, where it focuses on life sciences, financial services, bankruptcy and IP.

The deal is also the latest sign of consolidation in the legal market, as corporate clients reduce the number of outside counsel they hire and firms look to poach market share from each other.

Both law firms saw revenue and profits fall in 2015, according to The American Lawyer. Arnold & Porter’s reported revenue was at $650 million, down 6.4 percent from the year before, while Kaye Scholer’s reported revenue dropped 1.3 percent to $370 million.

The new firm will have its largest office based in Washington, D.C., where it will staff about 400 lawyers, while the next biggest office is set to be New York, where the firm will have 325 lawyers. It will also have 175 lawyers scattered across three California offices and 60 lawyers in London.

Click here for our interview with Michael Solow, managing partner at Kaye Scholer, and Richard Alexander, chair of Arnold & Porter.

Arnold & Porter, based out of Washington, D.C., has more than 700 lawyers and counts as an alum U.S. Circuit Judge Merrick Garland, who was nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court by President Barack Obama.

Kaye Scholer, meanwhile has 375 lawyers focused on life sciences, financial services, bankruptcy, and intellectual property. The firm made news last year after one of its partners, Evan Greebel, was charged with wire fraud in connection with his representation of Martin Shkreli. Greebel resigned from the firm in March and has maintained his innocence.

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