Healy & Baillie merges with Blank Rome

Healy & Baillie merges with Blank Rome    The law firm Blank Rome of Philadelphia is increasing the size of its maritime practice by merging with the New York firm Healy & Baillie.
   The merger with Healy & Baillie follows Bank Rome’s merger in January 2003 with Dyer Ellis & Joseph, a Washington, D.C.-based firm that is well known for a maritime practice that is focused on legislative and regulatory issues, environmental issues and financial transactions.
   “That merger has been very successful, and that is a key reason that we were interested in combining with Blank Rome,” said John D. Kimball, the chairman of Healy & Baillie.
   Healy & Baillie has 28 attorneys, Blank Rome about 500. The combined companies will have about 40 attorneys primarily practicing shipping law.
   “Our clients have gotten larger, we have seen a great deal of consolidation in the industry, we now represent companies that are publicly listed, some of our clients are major logistics companies and major tanker operators and their operations have gotten more complex and of greater scale,” Kimball said. “We felt the need to put ourselves together with a much larger law firm so we can service our clients more effectively.”
      The merger will allow Healy & Baillie to improve service in the areas of public securities, tax law, regulatory affairs, bankruptcy and civil and criminal defense work in pollution cases, he said.
   LeRoy Lambert, another partner at Healy & Baillie, noted that Blank Rome’s strength in regulatory issues would have an increasing role because of the heightened importance of issues such as port security, Coast Guard regulations and immigration in the shipping industry.
   Some similar mergers have been made by other maritime law firms. In 1997, the well-known admiralty firm Haight Gardner Poor & Haven merged with Holland and Knight.
   This year, Richards Butler, a British firm with a strong shipping practice, merged with the Pittsburgh firm Reed Smith.
   Brian Starer at Holland and Knight said the increased resources that a larger firm can bring to legal disputes or business transactions are reassuring to clients who want to know they will be able to “weather any storm.”