Bingham to acquire Washington firm

Continuing its drive to grow, Bingham McCutchen said yesterday it will acquire the 140-lawyer Washington, D.C., law firm Swidler Berlin, Bingham's sixth merger since 1997. The combined firm, which will use the name Bingham McCutchen, will have nearly 1,000 lawyers and more than $700 million in annual billings. The merger is expected to take place in March 2006, pending approval by both partnerships.

The planned merger was driven by geography and Bingham's desire to bolster its legal expertise in certain areas, according to Bingham's chairman, Jay S. Zimmerman.

The merger will more than triple the size of Bingham's Washington office, which now has 55 lawyers, making it the firm's second largest office after Boston. Bingham also will absorb Swidler's 10-lawyer New York office, increasing Bingham's office in New York to about 130 attorneys. In addition, the merger will give Bingham its first practice areas in telecommunications and lobbying, and will strengthen its real estate and structured finance practice.

''We've made no secret of the fact that we view Washington and New York as two key markets for us," Zimmerman said, ''and we thought this was a unique opportunity in Washington to pick up some people with some practices that would fit very nicely."

Mergers, acquisitions, and consolidations have become a trend in the law firm world, fueled by an increasingly competitive market for top clients. By expanding their geographic footprints and offering a broad range of legal services, many firms hope to gain an advantage in the race for prominent, high-paying national and international clients.

That trend has ushered in the age of the megafirm. A decade ago, a law firm of a few hundred attorneys was considered large; today, the nation's biggest firms often have more than 1,000 lawyers, and some have more than 3,000.

Zimmerman insisted that Bingham's business philosophy is not simply that bigger is better.

''In today's world we're not trying to be all things to all people, but trying to be at the top of a variety of particular practices," Zimmerman said. ''Nothing we do is driven by a need to be any particular size . . . but I do know we'll continue to get larger."

Bingham's next priority is to expand its presence in New York, according to Zimmerman, who will continue to be the firm's chairman after the merger. The post-merger role of Swidler's managing partner, Barry B. Direnfeld, has yet to be decided.

The planned merger reflects Bingham's aggressive expansion strategy adopted after Zimmerman was elected managing partner in 1994.

Zimmerman has led the firm, founded in 1891 as Bingham Dana & Gould, through mergers with five firms in the last eight years: Marks & Murase in New York in 1997; Hebb & Gitlin of Hartford in 1999; Richards & O'Neil of New York in 2001; McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen of San Francisco in 2002; and Riordan & McKinzie of Los Angeles in 2003.

Swidler was founded in 1982 and is known for its expertise in telecommunications, media, technology, and government affairs. The firm suffered setbacks following an unsuccessful merger with a New York firm, Shereff, Friedman, Hoffman & Goodman, in 1998. That merger -- which prompted numerous lawyers at Swidler, including the firm's whole New York office, to jump to other firms -- was eventually undone.

Despite those troubles, Swidler has remained very profitable. The firm's gross revenue last year was nearly $110 million, according to Direnfeld, while profits per partner were $1,070,000 and are expected to rise this year.

Gross annual revenue at Bingham McCutchen in 2004 was $565 million and profits per partner were $715,000, according to American Lawyer's annual survey on the economics of law firms.

It is difficult to compare Bingham's lawyer headcount -- which will be about 990 after the planned merger -- to that of other local firms because many Boston-based firms describe themselves as national as they add offices around the country. Among other large firms with Boston roots, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr (formerly Hale and Dorr) has 1,151 lawyers, and Ropes & Gray has 716 lawyers, according to the National Law Journal.

Bingham currently has 850 lawyers, including 268 in Boston, and 11 offices in the United States and overseas. Besides Boston, Washington, and New York, it has offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Walnut Creek, Calif., East Palo Alto, Calif., Costa Mesa, Calif., Hartford, London, and Tokyo. Bingham recently signed a lease for new headquarters in Boston at One Federal St., where it will move in June 2008.

Sacha Pfeiffer can be reached at pfeiffer@globe.com.