With its booming health care sector along with growing opportunities in technology and financial services, observers predict that the Southeast is primed for further law firm combinations on the heels of two the blockbuster mergers that ushered in 2023.
Last week saw Florida-based Holland & Knight announce a merger with Nashville’s Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis, signaling that the firm’s growth may not slow down anytime soon. Meanwhile, Maynard Cooper & Gale in Alabama is tying up with Carolinas-based Nexsen Pruet; the merged firm, to be named Maynard Nexen, will join Holland among the largest firms in the region.
Nashville, thanks to its unique role in the health care marketplace, has emerged as a major prize in recent years. Prior to Holland and Knight’s move into the city, the last several years have seen Kansas City’s Spencer Fane open an office by combining with 38-lawyer local firm Bone McAllester Norton as well as entries by Womble Bond Dickinson and Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart.
“Nashville, in the health-care industry world, is pretty much the epicenter of for-profit health-care, where investors come to own health-care,” said Epstein Becker Green partner John Tishler “I don’t really see that changing, in terms of health-care being of great interest to investors.”
Within Nashville’s particular health care market niche, Waller may have been one of the behemoths in town, but other firms are also hungry for growth there. Tishler himself joined health-care focused Epstein Becker & Green in November, and the firm continues to see opportunities to tap into investor interest within the region’s health care industry.
This week, the firm also announced the hire of two former Waller partners in the Music City, former finance and restructuring leader Ryan Cochran and employment partner Jeb Gerth.