According to reports in Legal Week, Addleshaw Goddard managing partner John Joyce was due to update the firm’s partnership on the status of talks with Hunton & Williams yesterday evening after reportedly travelling to the US to hold talks with the Virginia-based firm. If successful, a merger between the two would result in a 1,300-strong practice with combined revenues around £554m. Hunter & Williams currently has 696 lawyers across 19 offices in the US, Europe and Asia, according to the AmLaw 100. While Addleshaw’s own revenue was up 12 per cent to £193m in the last financial year, Hunton & Williams comparatively larger revenue of $528m was down 7 per cent from fiscal-2015.

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News of Addleshaw’s latest talks with Hunton & Williams comes hot on the heels of the firm’s failed merger talks with Scotland-based outfit Maclay Murray & Spens. Though talks between the two firms collapsed in February, a Maclay-Addleshaw merger would have resulted a firm with combined revenues around £230m. A statement from Addleshaw has maintained that the firm has ‘nothing to say’ about its talks with Hunton & Williams, though it has previously made it clear that it aims to clock £250m in fee revenue by fiscal-2018.

Sources: Legal Week; Legal Business