Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner has three Colorado offices and roughly 100 attorneys in them. Following the merger that made the international firm into one of the largest in the world, the local offices are seeing the benefit of having a larger international footprint.
Firm co-chair Terry Pritchard said the firm is now in an “integration phase” as it forms its now 32 global offices into a cohesive unit. She said the firm is working on defining the benefits the attorneys and their clients get from the global scale and determining how to best share capabilities across its reach.
Bryan Cave and Berwin Leighton Paisner combined in April, which made the firm one of the 50 largest in the world and, according to Bryan Cave, represent 53 of the world’s 100 largest companies.
Prior to the merger, Bryan Cave already had more than 800 lawyers in 25 offices across North America, Europe and Asia. And while the firm has reached around the world, the Colorado influence that came with the firm’s prior acquisition of Holme Roberts & Owen still makes Colorado one of the largest markets for the firm in terms of attorney count and provides a 100-plus year history in the area.
While the Colorado group makes up a small number of the firm’s attorneys and just one small part of its geographic footprint, Pritchard said Colorado attorneys and clients are seeing new opportunities. She said the Colorado offices are seeing many inbound opportunities brought their way from the UK attorneys while also opening doors for existing clients.
Co-chair Lisa Mayhew, who was with BLP prior to the merger, recently visited Denver, and Pritchard said she met with a Colorado company interested in engaging in overseas work while here.
The Colorado Springs sports law-focused group also now has colleagues in London with a similar practice. Those teams have begun working on projects together, Pritchard said.
And the Boulder office, which has a focus on technology, has new opportunities in pursuing data privacy and commercial tech that can be rolled out across the firm.
At the time of the merger, the firm identified growing its proprietary commercial technology and launching new technology, such as automated contract negotiation software, as priorities for the first six months.
“We’re pursuing and obtaining new opportunities we weren’t positioned for before, and we continue to learn what we can offer to clients to better serve them,” Pritchard said. “Some Colorado clients have matters in the UK or Europe and turned to us for those. And I think we have clients in Colorado and elsewhere that don’t have the need for global representation, but [the merger] enables us to offer a broader array of services to clients who need them.”
According to Pritchard, part of how the firm has managed to integrate offices across the board — be it Colorado Springs or London — is by attempting to make sure the firm feels small despite the sprawl. While that doesn’t mean the firm will maintain the same feeling as a four-attorney boutique, Pritchard said the firm has focused on culture throughout the merger process and that attorneys use a personal touch with colleagues and clients.
She said the firm holds many retreats and had one shortly after the merger in order to connect partners and share information about cases and pitches as well as getting them to know one another.
“We spent 14 months in discussions with BLP before the combination. We wanted to be sure, culturally, that we were compatible and as similar as we could be given we’re from different parts of the world.”
She said the main difference in the day-to-day operations of the firm is that some attorneys now wake up earlier in order to talk to their colleagues in the UK.
“I think every office has its own flavor but is grounded in a shared set of core values and shared principles we abide by,” Pritchard said. “We’re not all exactly alike in all offices. … I do think, at the end of the day, there’s a shared set of core values and a shared belief we want to operate as one team and one cohesive group.”
And while the firm, post-merger, is looking to create a unified culture for its attorneys across the globe, Pritchard said she also hopes to bring those benefits to clients as well.
“We clearly have a more global presence than previously,” she said. “I hope clients can take advantage of that. I think of us as a relationship firm that wants to do as much as we can soup to nuts across the board to get to know our clients and help them with matters large and small. That hasn’t changed in terms of outlook or strategy. We’re equipped to do more because of combination. We’re really discovering our own assets as we get to know each other and figuring what we can do for our larger clients.”
— Tony Flesor