Law firms' urge to merge leads to a voluntary purge.

• Author: Overton, Sharon
• Position: North Carolina law firms - Industry Overview

In April 1992, William Maready left Petree Stockton & Robinson, but not without regrets. He had joined the firm 31 years earlier as a young man only a few years out of law school. "Over the years, I worked with the idea that it was my being," he says. "You always have a hard time turning away from something into which you put so much of your heart and soul."

Petree Stockton, founded in Winston-Salem in 1918, specializes in litigation and corporate, environmental, banking and tax law. In the mid-'80s, hungry to expand its client base and establish a statewide presence, it merged with the Charlotte firm of Farris, Mallard, Cummings & Booe, opened a Raleigh office and quickly began adding associates.

By 1991, it was the state's third-largest firm, with 113 lawyers. But a year later, 11 lawyers -- a third of the litigators -- walked out in a single month. Among the defectors were Maready and Norwood Robinson, the firm's third-most-senior partner, who opened their own practice with four other former Petree Stockton lawyers.

His old firm's rapid growth brought problems, Maready says. There were conflicts with partners and their clients. The cost of doing business went up. Administrative duties began to eat up more of his time. The firm's philosophy seemed to be changing as well. "When you take on a merger," he says, "you are taking on people who have a different culture, a different way of life and oftentimes ... a different work ethic and philosophy than you. You're taking on people you didn't 'grow up with,' and they have different ideas."

Law practices weren't immune to the merger mania that swept the business world in the '80s. It was a way for big firms to expand into new markets, strengthen specialties and fend off threats from out-of-state megafirms. But in the past few years, many of the mergers have frayed or even unraveled.

Take, for example, the case of Moore & Van Allen of Charlotte. Through the mid-'80s it merged with firms in Charlotte, Raleigh and Durham. In 1987, a union with Columbia, S.C.-based Nexsen, Pruet, Jacobs & Pollard created a firm that seemed destined to earn a regional reputation. But the marriage lasted less than a year.

Defections included partners William S. Patterson, Noah Huffstetler, Travis Porter, Oliver Alphin and Arch T. Allen III. (Allen, now a vice chancellor at UNC Chapel Hill, is affiliated with Moore & Van Allen, though he no longer practices law.) John Fennebresque, a major rainmaker and mastermind...