In January last year, Arnold & Porter and Kaye Scholer officially combined and announced to the world that from then on, they would be known as Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer. The firm even migrated to a new official website located at apks.com. The brand, including the firm’s then-new logo, prominently featured both merger partners’ legacy names.
Just over a year from their marriage, Arnold & Porter has quietly axed the Kaye Scholer name from its brand. The old URL now redirects to arnoldporter.com and the firm’s emails now also point to the same domain. A new logo is on the site, where most mentions of “Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer” have also been scrubbed.
The firm is still legally named Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, as reflected in its copyright notice on the bottom of its webpages. And the firm wants to stress that it’s just a trade name change.
“The full legal name of the firm continues to be Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP. The trend in the legal industry over the last 10 years has been toward shorter trade names,” a spokesperson told Law.com.
Still, it appears that the Kaye Scholer brand is effectively dead. Before it merged with Arnold & Porter, New York-headquartered Kaye Scholer had about 375 lawyers and offices in Frankfurt, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Silicon Valley, Washington DC, and West Palm Beach. In 2016, it is estimated to have had approximately US$320m in turnover.
Washington DC-headquartered Arnold & Porter was much larger. It had more than 700 lawyers and a top line of about $625m. The legacy firm had offices in Brussels, Denver, Houston, London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley.
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