McKenna Long & Aldridge joins firm

A top Atlanta legal establishment takes the opportunity ‘to go big,’

McKenna Long & Aldridge, one of Atlanta’s top legal establishments, merged Wednesday with Dentons US — the world’s largest law firm.

The deal brings the trend toward legal mergers to Atlanta and gives McKenna Long, started in 1974, a grander global footprint and the opportunity to play a larger role in growing Asian, European and Canadian markets.

Dentons already counts 6,500 lawyers and advisers worldwide and tallied $1.3 billion in revenue last year. McKenna Long’s 434 lawyers and public policy advisers, as well as more than $300 million in annual revenue, will be added to the mix.

“We were presented with the opportunity to go big and go global,” said Jeff Haidet, the chairman of McKenna Long who becomes a co-CEO with Dentons’ Peter Wolfson. “Obviously, our big corporate citizens in Atlanta already have experience internationally. Now, a lot of middle-market companies will be able to take advan- tage of our network of relationships and skills to help navigate the global marketplace.”

McKenna Long, headquartered in Washington, D.C., runs 15 offices in New York, Miami, Brussels, Seoul and beyond. Government work is a speciality, but litigation, energy, real estate and health care plump the legal portfolio.

Atlanta-based Long, Aldridge & Norman joined D.C.based McKenna & Cuneo in 2002. A decade later, California-based Luce Forward combined with McKenna Long.

Dentons has been on a merger tear of late, joining Beijing-based Dacheng — 3,700 attorneys and advisers — earlier this year. With McKenna Long, Dentons will have 125 locations in 50 countries.

“These mid-market firms, like McKenna Long, are large, but they’re not going to get $1,000 an hour from their clients like King & Spalding and Sutherland Asbill & Brennan,” said Mark Curriden, a lawyer and legal analyst in Dallas. “But they’re joining a megafirm that has lawyers specializing in just about every area of law in just about every marketplace in the world. That’s the Denton model.”

McKenna Long danced with Dentons in 2013 but didn’t agree to a merger. Elliott Portnoy, Dentons’ Global CEO, said in a conference call that the “timing didn’t prove ripe” because the firm “had not yet achieved these successes we’ve had since then, including stronger years of profitability and revenue growth in the U.S., U.K. and elsewhere.”

Dentons won’t have a headquarters, per se, but a number of major offices, including Atlanta. Portnoy calls it “a truly poly-centric law firm.”

Prior to this week’s merger, Dentons was the 56th largest U.S. law firm. It will jump to No. 14 with McKenna Long on board. Globally, Dentons ranks in the top 5 in Europe, China, Canada and the Middle East.