© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.
By Mark Curriden
(March 30) –Three years ago, Dallas bankruptcy lawyer Bill Finkelstein was shopping around for a new law firm to join. He narrowed the list to two: San Antonio-based Cox Smith Matthews and Detroit-based Dykema.
Last April 17, Finkelstein put together a lunch meeting at the Plaza Club in Dallas between leaders of the two firms. The business romance blossomed.
Cox Smith and Dykema will publicly announce today that they are merging to create a 450-lawyer firm that will have about 140 lawyers in Texas. The combined firm will have an estimated $65 million in revenues from its Texas offices in 2015.
“We put together lists of things we wanted and didn’t want,” says Cox Smith Managing Director Deborah Williamson. “We are solidly in the middle market space. We wanted a firm like us.”
“The amazing thing is there were no client or practice conflicts,” she said. “This merger was purely driven by the law firms and our people, not by consultants.”
Partners at the two law firms approved the merger earlier in March.
Cox Smith is a 118-lawyer business law firm that traces its roots to the early 1930s in San Antonio. The firm has offices in Austin, Dallas, El Paso, McAllen and San Antonio. Valero and AT&T are two of its larger clients.
Dykema was founded in Chicago in 1897, but is mostly known for its representation of automakers, including Ford and General Motors. The firm opened its Dallas office in 2007 and has about 25 lawyers practicing in Texas.
“We recognized a while back that while adding one or two lawyers at a time may be good at filling specific needs or holes, it was not going to be an effective means of truly growing in Texas,” says Peter Kellett, Chairman and CEO of Dykema.
Dykema’s 330 lawyers in its 15 national offices provide Cox Smith’s clients a broader platform and deeper bench of talent, Williamson says.
“The more we learned about Dykema and its people, the more obvious it became that our firms were a compelling fit culturally and from a business standpoint,” she says. “We have practice strengths that complement one another and allow us to better serve clients as a combined entity. And both of our firms emphasize and prioritize client service as a key differentiator.”
Deborah Williamson will serve on the new firm’s executive board and Jamie Smith will serve as Dykema’s vice chair in Texas.
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