In the past eighteen months, the international legal market has entered a phase of accelerated consolidation without recent precedent. Winston & Strawn and Taylor Wessing. The discussions between Ashurst and Perkins Coie. The movements surrounding Hogan Lovells and Cadwalader. The underlying rationale of each of these transactions is the same: to build transatlantic platforms capable of competing for major global mandates before others do.

The question many managing partners are now asking is not whether they should grow. It is whether they will arrive in time.

But there is another question that almost no one raises openly:

how many of these mergers will create real value, and how many will simply be larger?

The mirage of aggregated revenue

When two firms announce a merger, the headline almost always refers to combined revenue. This is understandable. It is the most visible metric. And it is, frequently, the most misleading.

Aggregated revenue is not value. It is merely a snapshot of what existed prior to the merger. Real value depends on a single variable that almost no due diligence process measures with sufficient rigour: the ability to retain that business once the transaction has closed.

And herein lies the real risk: in many firms, a significant proportion of revenue does not belong to the firm. It belongs to the partner. When that partner becomes uncomfortable within the new structure, because their autonomy has been reduced, because their incentives have changed, because the culture is not what they were promised, they leave. And they take the client with them.

Firms that execute mergers most effectively do not analyse total revenue. They assess the degree of institutionalisation of each client relationship. They then make decisions about which business is genuinely integrable and which, in practice, is non-transferable.

The challenge that truly undermines mergers: culture

Of all the challenges posed by integration, compensation, governance, teams, expectations, there is one that is systematically underestimated and, in my experience, ultimately erodes the greatest number of mergers: cultural divergence.

This is not about whether a firm is more Anglo-Saxon or continental. It is something deeper: how decisions are taken, how power is distributed, which behaviours are rewarded and which are penalised. A firm with an entrepreneurial and decentralised culture, where partners enjoy a high degree of autonomy and move business quickly, faces significant difficulties integrating into a more institutionalised organisation with committees, processes and complex decision-making structures. And vice versa.

When these tensions are not actively managed from day one, they do not disappear. They ferment. And they surface at the most critical moments: in discussions over profit allocation, in the assignment of premium matters, and in determining who has genuine access to the upper echelons of power within the new organisation.

Compensation and governance: where reality is decided

Remuneration systems are the most honest mirror of a firm. They reflect what is truly valued, who holds power and which behaviours are incentivised. Integrating organisations with different compensation models without redefining incentives is not neutral: it generates immediate conflict over client origination, internal collaboration and entitlement within the new structure.

Successful integrations introduce clear transitional models. They do not attempt to resolve everything in the first year. They align incentives progressively and measure progress through concrete metrics.

Governance presents an equally delicate tension. Every merger redistributes power. Determining which partners participate in decision-making bodies, and with what political weight, is a negotiation that can poison the process if not handled with judgement and transparency. Firms with greater integration experience establish transitional periods in which full access to governance is earned over time and through results. It is not granted from day one.

Mid-level talent: the value no one protects

A common error in merger processes is that negotiations focus on partners while associates are relegated to the background. This is a costly mistake. The real continuity of the business, the day-to-day client relationship, matter execution, and operational knowledge of the firm, resides to a large extent within mid-level teams. If these professionals do not perceive genuine opportunities within the new structure, if they feel their careers have been left in limbo, they leave. And the loss of mid-level talent following a merger can erode the strategic value of the transaction more rapidly than any other factor.

The question no one asks: what will you stop doing?

There is a strategic challenge that few firms address explicitly, and it is probably the most important of all: defining what will no longer be done after the merger.

Growth is not about adding revenue. It is about making difficult decisions regarding where to concentrate resources, which practices or sectors will cease to be priorities, and what type of work will be pursued, and what will be allowed to go. Organisations that attempt to grow without redefining their strategic focus often end up larger, more complex and harder to manage. But not more competitive. Nor more profitable.

What distinguishes the firms that get it right

After working with firms on integration processes across different markets, one factor consistently distinguishes those that create value from those that do not: the former treat the merger as a process of organisational transformation. The latter treat it as a growth initiative.

The difference is not semantic. A well-executed merger changes how the organisation operates, how decisions are taken, how work is allocated and how success is measured. It requires a genuine willingness to change on both sides, not merely a willingness to grow.

The current wave of consolidation in the legal market will produce some major winners. It will also produce combinations that, within three or four years, will be remembered as examples of what not to do. The difference between them will not lie in the scale they achieve.

It will lie in whether they had the organisational resolve to carry out true integration.

You can read the full article in El Confidencial here.