McCarter English joining forces with prominent tech law firm

McCarter & English announced Monday it will be combining with a smaller, boutique law firm specializing in early stage and emerging growth technology companies.Once the merger is completed Oct. 1, the firm will have a total of nine offices and approximately 425 attorneys. The joined firm will be called McCarter & English.

Michael P. Kelly, the Wilmington, Delaware-based chairman of McCarter & English, said the acquisition fits in with the firm’s growth plan.

“We don’t grow for growth’s sake, we grow only to better serve our clients, and we settle only for those who are the best at what they do,” Kelly said. “We have that at SorinRand. What attracted us to them was the high quality of their work and their character.”

Kelly believes the firm, and its clients, will be able to benefit from its newfound focus in the growing technology industry in the Garden State.

“They represent a lot of emerging growth and middle-market sectors with a focus on technology,” Kelly said. “It’s by design that they’re located in East Burnswick, just down the road from Princeton.

“We are still New Jersey’s oldest and, frankly best, law firm, so I think it makes sense we have a presence in the Garden State’s Silicon Alley.”

Founded in 2009 by attorneys with experience at larger firms, SorinRand’s model was to minimize in size so it could provide services for emerging companies at a lower cost.

According to David J. Sorin, managing partner of SorinRand, the combination will be mutually beneficial.

“As we were approaching our five-year anniversary, we began to reflect on what we were doing, what our model is and how we could be as successful as possible as a firm,” Sorin said. “We recognized that, as an under-20-person law firm, we were going to be limited in the services we could provide.”

Sorin will become managing partner of McCarter English’s new East Brunswick office, as well as the head of the firm’s broadened Venture Capital and Early Stage and Emerging Companies practice.

He says these new resources will allow the smaller firm to better serve its clients, where they might have had to look elsewhere previously.

“We certainly could do all things corporate, but we had a small IP bench, we needed to partner with others on most of our tax work,” Sorin said. “What we started thinking about was whether or not it was possible to be at a larger firm like McCarter without sacrificing the positive, differentiating factors that made us successful in the technology and entrepreneurial markets.”

For Sorin, it’s the matching of two complementary cultures and business practices that made this move the right fit.

“We had the good fortune of being approached by a number of very significant law firms that wanted us to combine with them,” Sorin said. “Until we talked to McCarter & English, really started to talk to them and get an understanding of the culture, the lawyers and the quality there, we said no to everybody.”

Kelly recognizes a similar model at McCarter & English, just on a bigger scale.

“A lot of the attorneys at that firm are senior alums from major firms and they just decided they would benefit their clients by being a smaller firm where they could do the same ‘A ’ work for half the cost,” Kelly said. “And that’s been a McCarter theme. By design, we’re a regional firm, not a national firm, because we think we can do a better job at a fraction of the cost.”

As for future growth, Kelly says the firm’s focus will continue to be on the client.

“We don’t have a plan that says, ‘We’ve got to increase our size by 20 percent,’” he said. “We grow solely in response to our clients needs.”

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