Less than two years after cutting the ribbon on its Global Services Center at Lexington’s Coldstream Research Campus, the law firm of Bingham McCutchen has been acquired by the Philadelphia-based firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.
Morgan Lewis announced the acquisition on November 24, stating that the company was welcoming “226 partners and more than 525 other lawyers, legal professionals and staff” from Bingham into its fold. The addition of Bingham’s attorneys brings the total number of lawyers at the firm to 2,000 in 28 offices across the United States, and makes the firm the largest in the country, when measured by headcount of domestic attorneys.
The fate of the Lexington-based Global Services Center, which housed much of Bingham’s operations and back-of-house administration, remains uncertain. At the time of its grand opening in April 2013, the 45,000-square-foot former IBM building was expected to house 250 Bingham employees within a year. The center's staff members held positions in finance and accounting, human resources, operations, marketing, information technology and risk management, as well as some lawyers and other legal professionals.
Some trade media, including the legal industry website Above the Law, have cited unnamed internal sources as saying that the center is expected to close by the end of June 2015. Morgan Lewis did not respond to repeated requests for information on the company’s plans for the Global Services Center.