Troutman Pepper and Locke Lord have confirmed today (6 September) that they will merge to create a firm with more than 1,600 lawyers and revenue in the region of $1.6bn.

The merger will go live 1 January 2025, with the firm to be known as Troutman Pepper Locke. It will have 33 offices across the US as well as European bases in London and Brussels. 

Tom Cole, chair of Troutman Pepper, will serve as chair of the merged firm, while David Taylor, chair of Locke Lord, and Ashley Taylor, vice chair of Troutman Pepper, will serve as vice chairs. Amie Colby, managing partner of Troutman Pepper, will serve as managing partner. 

“The expanded footprint of Troutman Pepper Locke will allow us to offer a far deeper bench of attorneys to advise clients on complex transactional, litigation and regulatory matters,” David Taylor commented. “In addition, our lawyers are aligned on core values with a commitment to innovation, inclusion and pro bono service.”   

Troutman Pepper, born of a 2020 merger between Atlanta-founded Troutman Sanders and Philadelphia-founded Pepper Hamilton, is by far the larger of the two firms. Its 1,100 lawyers brought in gross revenue of $1.08bn in 2023 according to the American Lawyer, the same as the year before and a figure that saw it rank just outside the US top 50.  

Meantime Locke Lord has around 600 lawyers and had turnover of $497.6m in 2023, a slight decrease from the $500.1m the firm brought in the year before. The firm is similarly the product of a merger in 2007 of Texas-founded Locke Liddell & Sapp and Chicago-based Lord Bissell & Brook, growing further in 2015 through a tie-up with Boston firm Edwards Wildman.  

The two firms have similar levels of profitability and a near identical proportion of ranked lawyers, publicly available data tracked by Pirical data shows (see table below). They also have overlapping strengths in banking and finance, corporate, litigation and real estate and in sectors including health care and life sciences, private equity and financial services.  

The merger will see Troutman Pepper gain strength across projects, energy and infrastructure – Locke Lord’s fourth largest practice – and a presence in Texas, where Big Law firms have been ramping up their presence to take advantage of energy sector work. Locke Lord has three offices across the state in Austin, Dallas and Houston.  

It would also see Troutman Pepper, which has 22 locations across the US, gain an international presence through Locke Lord’s offices in London and Brussels. The latter has 18 US offices, including seven that overlap with Troutman Pepper’s in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Washington DC. 

News of the merger comes amid increased merger activity among US law firms, with 29 completed in the first half according to Fairfax Associates, up from 28 in H1 2023 and 25 in each of the previous two years.  

Activity was focused on small and midsize firms, though there was a large merger – defined by both firms having at least 100 lawyers – between Shearman & Sterling and UK firm Allen & Overy, which created a 3,500-lawyer behemoth when it went live at the start of May. 

Last year the number of large mergers grew to five from just two the year before, as big firms looked to greater scale to outpace rivals and shore up profits. The largest was Miami-based Holland & Knight’s (1,400 lawyers) tie-up with Nashville-based Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis (257).  

Troutman Pepper’s tie-up with Locke Lord is the largest to emerge so far this year after Shearman’s. The merged firm – known as A&O Shearman – said today that it would cut around 10% of its 800-strong global partnership by the end of the financial year to enable it to focus on growth areas, and would also close its Johannesburg office and its consulting arm.