Blank Rome firm to grow by 20% by acquiring Dickstein Shapiro

Center city law firm Blank Rome, a fixture in the city's legal community for 70 years, said Thursday it had acquired Dickstein Shapiro, a venerated but struggling Washington D.C.-based firm in a deal that will expand Blank Rome's presence in the nation's capital while securing its position as one of Philadelphia's leading law firms.

In all, some 107 Dickstein Shapiro lawyers will join Blank Rome, most of them based in Washington.

Dickstein, known for its substantial regulatory practice in Washington, is one of the nation's most profitable law firms.

Despite partner defections that have caused the firm to decline from 340 lawyers only a few years ago to about 130, the firm is still reporting profits per partner of nearly $1 million, according to the American Lawyer magazine.

Blank Rome has been busily acquiring firms, and just last year announced that it had merged with a 24-lawyer firm in Houston to take advantage of that city's bustling maritime and litigation practices.

The addition of 107 lawyers from Dickstein Shapiro - 94 in Washington and 13 in New York - is Blank Rome's biggest acquisition to date, and it will take the firm's attorney headcount to about 620. Beforehand, its biggest acquisition was in 2000, of the Tenzer Greenblatt firm in New York.

"Part of our plan has been to grow in tier-one cities and in Washington D.C. in particular," said firm chairman Alan Hoffman. "So with this acquisition we are moving toward that goal."

The firm now has about 200 lawyers in its Philadelphia office and with the acquisition will have 150 in New York and about the same number in Washington.

Merger talks between the two firms began in early December, after an earlier attempt by Dickstein Shapiro to merge with St. Louis-based Bryan Cave foundered, reportedly over concerns by some Dickstein partners about the terms of the transaction.

Hoffman said Blank Rome's discussion with Dickstein grew ever more serious in the ensuing weeks and was capped by an hours-long Christmas Eve phone conversation between Hoffman and Dickstein chairman James Kelly, where the outlines of a deal began to take shape.

There ensued an intensive process of due diligence, with Blank Rome partners seeking to verify the profitability numbers provided by Dickstein. Once that hurdle was cleared, the firms then needed to work out how their existing office spaces and lease commitments would figure into the transaction.

The 50-plus Blank Rome lawyers now based at the Watergate building in Washington will move to the Dickstein Shapiro offices at 1825 I Street, N.W.

Dickstein's 13 corporate attorneys in Manhattan will move to Blank Rome offices there.

Under the terms of the transaction, the Dickstein Shapiro firm essentially will be dissolved and the combined firm will carry the name of Blank Rome.

Hoffman said the core group of lawyers remaining at Dickstein includes its most accomplished and profitable practices. The acquisition will bring a government contracts practice to Blank Rome in Washington, a practice that Blank Rome did not have before the acquisition.

Blank Rome will also pick up an insurance policy holder practice that it now does not have. Hoffman said he expects that practice will get substantially more work from Blank Rome's corporate clients involved in disputes with their insurers.

And its intellectual property practice also will be bolstered, he said.

Persons familiar with the situation ascribed the partnership defections at Dickstein in recent years to the dominance of its Washington office. Outlying offices, which were hit hard by partner departures, never felt entirely assimilated into the firm.

Hoffman said that one of the appealing characteristics of the Dickstein firm is that its Washington practice is composed largely of lawyers who have worked together for decades, suggesting the stability that is highly prized at Blank Rome.

cmondics@phillynews.com

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