Hogan Lovells Shearman Sterling Merger? Forum

[Anonymous User]

https://abovethelaw.com/2022/12/hogan-l ... e-horizon/

I'm at Shearman and just got an email that this was "market speculation and at this stage, not accurate to suggest."

Seems like not a strong denial and that there may have in fact been talks at whatever stage.

[Anonymous User]

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[mandrewsf]

I don't know anything about Hogan, but every time Shearman's name pops up I am reminded of this brilliantly-written article:
https://www.city-journal.org/html/my-li ... 11959.html

OP, I hope the firm's culture has moved on since then.

[Anonymous User]

I don't know anything about Hogan, but every time Shearman's name pops up I am reminded of this brilliantly-written article:
https://www.city-journal.org/html/my-li ... 11959.html

OP, I hope the firm's culture has moved on since then.

I’ve read most of the “big law is horrible and will ruin your life” stories but hadn’t come across this one.

Do people think there’s any chance that big law was worse in the 90s and 2000s than now? Most of these kinds of articles and posts seem to date from around then. Maybe the overall reform of corporate culture in the woke/Me Too era has been good for the industry, eliminating screamers and the kind of petty humiliation this author describes?

[existentialcrisis]

I don't know anything about Hogan, but every time Shearman's name pops up I am reminded of this brilliantly-written article:
https://www.city-journal.org/html/my-li ... 11959.html

OP, I hope the firm's culture has moved on since then.

I’ve read most of the “big law is horrible and will ruin your life” stories but hadn’t come across this one.

Do people think there’s any chance that big law was worse in the 90s and 2000s than now? Most of these kinds of articles and posts seem to date from around then. Maybe the overall reform of corporate culture in the woke/Me Too era has been good for the industry, eliminating screamers and the kind of petty humiliation this author describes?

I’ll bet it was better tbh.

Better technology has made it possible to be available to work 24/7 in a way it wasn’t quite possible in 1997, although blackberrys and such were prob in their infancy.

[institutionalized]

From talking with older partners it sounds like the lack of good work from home tech meant you stayed at the office until the work was done and you could be called to go in to the office whenever. Back in the day.

[Anonymous User]

Hogan is one of those oversized-but-not-super-profitable Swiss vereins, like DLA Piper, Dentons, and Norton Rose Fulbright. Haven't really seen thriving firms join up with a verein, interesting that Shearman is going this route.

[Anonymous User]

I don't know anything about Hogan, but every time Shearman's name pops up I am reminded of this brilliantly-written article:
https://www.city-journal.org/html/my-li ... 11959.html

OP, I hope the firm's culture has moved on since then.

Ha, great article. I am the OP.

Like all biglaw firms, much is dependent on your group, office, etc. I am not in NY, although parts of my group are, and generally my office is full of decent enough people. Definitely probably bad apples around there that I just don't interact with.

[Anonymous User]

Hogan is one of those oversized-but-not-super-profitable Swiss vereins, like DLA Piper, Dentons, and Norton Rose Fulbright. Haven't really seen thriving firms join up with a verein, interesting that Shearman is going this route.

Shearman isn't what I'd call a thriving firm, so the merger would make sense. Shearman props up its PPP by maintaining one of the lowest % of attorneys who are equity partners in all of biglaw. The firm's group chairs seem to get poached by Latham or some other bigger pocket firm frequently, and it lost its entire international arbitration group (or at least the foreign part of the group, which I believe was almost all of it) a couple of years ago. The firm is propped up almost solely by Capital Markets and strategic M&A. That's why when we saw the large slowdowns in 2020 Shearman had the largest PPP decline in all of biglaw. It's also why it bounced back nicely in 2021 during deal mania. Shearman very much exists in the past. Having big strategic M&A deals is nice, but unless you're doing it at the scale of Cravath, S&C, etc. white shoe firm then you're going to need PE to continue robust growth in M&A. To call Shearman even a weak player in PE would be too generous. The firm focused on foreign offices for too long and has a sad presence in the U.S. outside of NY, except it doesn't have the luxury of just being a NY firm. It's been late to pretty much every market that it has joined. Law students have also largely avoided the firm, and it's well known to be the place for below median T14 students. The firm is never going to return to a fraction of its former glory, and it'll firmly be a V50-V60 firm for the foreseeable future.