Since the January 2015 merger between Dentons and China’s Dacheng scarcely a week has gone by without the ‘world’s largest law firm’ hitting the headlines. Last year the firm carried out seven mergers in four continents, launched offices in Europe and Africa, and made lateral hires on a regular basis worldwide. For a while, it seemed the growth would never stop.
But this expansion was met with bemusement by many in the market. Rivals queried whether it was sustainable and departing partners claimed there was little integration and not enough cross-selling between Dentons’ six Verein members.
At The Lawyer’s Global Collaboration Summit last month Dentons chair Joe Andrew won over many in a sceptical audience with an assured and open presentation in which he claimed Dentons was “the largest referral network in the world”. The stats he presented were impressive: he said Dentons had referred work to 920 other firms last year, and picked up 500 inbound referrals. Crucially, Andrew said the firm’s global scope was also producing internal referrals.
So we decided to put Dentons to the test (see cover story on page 20). Choosing real estate, as one of the practices shared by all the legacy firms, we asked the firm for data on its clients, lateral hires and transactional work in this sector. It provided the bulk of this data, although some had to be sifted: for example, taking out the legacy McKenna Long & Aldridge partners who had been included in the laterals list. But the figures show the real estate practice has indeed grown since the merger, with 26 lateral hires.
However, the cross-selling argument is less persuasive. Of a list of key real estate clients that Dentons provided, only 15 were cross-regional compared with 36 single-region clients. Meanwhile, although it monitors referrals on a daily basis, the firm keeps those figures confidential. Andrew’s contention that inter-office instructions have “surpassed expectations” remains, for the moment, just a contention.
The verdict of clients and competitors is mixed, with one general counsel telling us he “can’t really remember” the last time he used Dentons, despite the firm being on his panel. Undoubtedly, Dentons’ integration is still a work in progress. As we reported on Friday, the firm plans to streamline its Chinese management structure and, though a number of ex-partners claim lack of cross-selling was one reason they quit, those remaining sing the praises of its multijurisdictional capabilities.
The firm’s ‘Pac-Man’ strategy has brought it fame, or perhaps infamy. The question now is – will the ghosts in the machine be its downfall?
